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THE SHRINE INVISIBLE 




WILLIAM J. HAMPTON 



THE 

SHRINE INVISIBLE 



BY 

WILLIAM J. HAMPTON, D.D. 

MEMBER OF THE 

NEWARK CONFERENCE OF THE METHODIST 

EPISCOPAL CHURCH 



PUBLISHED BY 
WILLIAM J. HAMPTON 

BELVIDERE, NEW JERSEY 






COPYRIGHT, 1912 
BY WILLIAM J. HAMPTON 



THE 'PLIMPTON'PRESS 'NORWOOD 'MASS 'U'S -A 



^./fo 



©CI.A328223 



'li^ I 



TO MY WIFE 

AMELIA BOYCE HAMPTON 

THIS VOLUME IS 
AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 



FOREWORD 

The Family of Books! What a family it is! 
The wise man said . centuries before Christ, 
*'of making many books, there is no end; and 
much study is a weariness of the flesh." What 
was the family of books then, in comparison 
with that of today! We wonder what Solomon 
would say, were he living now! Some books 
have lived long, and their influence has been 
like that of some people, — useful, helpful, 
cheerful, inspiring, tending Godward. Some 
books have died in their infancy. Of others, 
it might be said with propriety, quoting the 
language, if not the exact words, of Christ, 
concerning Judas, It would have been good had 
they never been bom. Many now sleep in 
peaceful oblivion, in the cemetery of Bookdom, 
and nothing remains to mark their resting-place. 

This Kttle volume, rather timidly, crowds its 
way into the already overcrowded Family of 
Books. The trend of thought is optimistic. 
It seeks the sunny side of the street. No one 
denies that there are evils galore, and conscience, 
played upon by a Christian education and en- 



viii Foreword 

vironment, is not slow in detecting such evil. 

But evil seems the more black, when the good 

thrives best. There are clouds in the heavens, 

but they float in a sea of atmosphere flooded 

with sunhght. Their very blackness is made 

beautiful, by the deft touches of the Great 

Architect of the Universe, as he burnishes the 

fringes with gold. And there are acres upon 

acres of blue and gold, where there are no clouds. 

So there are acres upon acres of goodness, where 

there are only patches of evil. The brightest 

minds, the busiest brains, the best of souls, 

insist that 

" God's in his heaven. 
All's right with the world." * 

With such sunny souls we would be friends at 
once. 

Author. 



CONTENTS 

I. The Shrine's Register of Correct Morals . i 

II. Is the World Growing Better? 39 

III. Along the Gospel Trail ....... 57 

IV. Is Family Religion Decaying? 75 

V. Is Giving a Grace or a Grind? 91 

VI. Men and the Church: Modern Tendencies . 103 

r 



THE SHRINE'S REGISTER 
OF CORRECT MORALS 



"Dare I say, begone! yet thou dost taunt 

Till I could strike thee dead; 
Impervious monitor, why dost thou haimt 

And fill my soul with dread 
Till peace has, 'frighted, fled? 

Security and ease thou'st bid depart, 

Tell me why hast thou sped 
Thine all remorseless arrows to the smart? 
Why should thy gleaming lamp thus scorch my heart? 

"Begone! he cried, and she replied him mild, 

(Tho' all reluctant to forego her sway) 
*0 man, thou art an ever wayward child. 

Where wilt thou be when I shall take away 
From off thine heart, my hand? Dost thou essay 

To still my warning voice? I go!* She fled, 

Alas, no longer would she stay. 
But joined the guardian angels overhead, 
And left apostate man, with manhood — dead." 

Unknown. 



The Shrine's Register of 
Correct Morals 

The Mind of Man 

The study of the material universe is of great 
interest to many students. It is teeming with 
reahties. Phenomena can be handled with our 
hands. We can see them with the physical 
sight. The external sense is employed as the 
instrument or agent. The mind, too, is a real 
thing. We can look at it, in a sense, the same 
as we can look at a most intricate machine. The 
X-ray reveals the hidden bones and muscles and 
arteries and foreign matter, should any exist, 
in the human body, so that we are able to read 
the framework of a man through and through. 
The keen eye of the master-surgeon, who has 
made a hfe study of the human frame, as he 
looks at a man, knows the location and the 
peculiar function of each organ of the body and 
with rare skill, with a surgical instrument keen 
as a razor's edge, can perform the most deKcate 
operation on the most sensitive organ. Never 



4 The Shrine Invisible 

surgeon dissected body with greater skill and 
hair-breadth nicety than philosophers have 
dissected mind. They have looked in on that 
which was ever ready to elude, yet holding, 
have, with instruments keener than the surgeon's, 
laid the mind open, and philosophically separated 
every shade of thought. 

As we follow the operation, what becomes 
more real? What is more real? Emerson says, 
"We go to the gymnasium and the swimming 
pool to see the power and beauty of the body. 
There is a like pleasure and a higher benefit 
from witnessing intellectual feats of all kinds, 
as feats of memory, of mathematical combina- 
tion, great power of abstraction, the trans- 
mutings of the imagination, even versatility 
and concentration, as these acts expose the in- 
visible organs and members of the mind^ 

To Emerson, mind in action was as real as 
physical feats. It gave him as much real en- 
joyment to witness intellectual feats, products 
of the invisible organs, as it would an artist to 
be charmed by the exhibition of a masterpiece 
of art. He who is able to see a great mental 
picture, as exhibited by one of trained philosoph- 
ical mind, wherein there are the keenest and 
most delicate distinctions, is greater mentally 
than one who can appreciate the lights and 



Register of Correct Morals 5 

shadows, lines and angles and symmetrical 
proportions of a great painting. 

Painting, sculpture, music and architecture 
appeal to some one or more of the five senses 
for interpretation and appreciation. Poetry- 
appeals to not one. Mind alone must interpret. 
Therefore, poetry is the most difficult of inter- 
pretation of the fine arts, for mind must discern 
its beauty and quality without the aid of eye, 
ear or touch. For this reason the mind must be 
more thoroughly trained to interpret masterful 
intellectual feats, since it must perform its diffi- 
cult task imaided by the eye, the ear or touch. 

Mind, as truly real as phenomena, has all the 
attributes of a real substance, i.e., being, en- 
durance, power. It can and does stand all the 
tests to which metaphysicians subject it. We 
study material phenomena, by means of the 
bodily eye, the microscope, or the telescope. 
But we cannot turn the bodily eye in upon the 
marvelous operations of the mind. Neither 
will the microscope or telescope render assistance 
here. Their nature is spiritual. They cannot 
be seen or heard or felt in the sense of touch. 
Yet the operations of the mind are so real that 
some philosophers have made mind more real 
than matter. Both are real. These ghosthke 
mental faculties, so fairylike, so ephemeral and 



6 The Shrine Invisible 

yet so real, can be seen and analyzed by a vision 
keener than bodily eyes, aided by the best of 
artificial appliances. We look in upon this 
strange realm by means of introspection. The 
keen vision of the mind's eye discerns points 
and lines of distinction, finer than those made 
with diamond point. Just as a kaleidoscope 
constantly changes with slightest touch, so the 
mind seems never to be entirely at rest. Con- 
stantly the mental pictures are being changed. 
Shifted by whose hand? Who has the constant 
manipulation of the scene? As fast as one 
picture comes, it flees and another takes its 
place, so on in apparently endless succession. 
Yet, says McCosh, "Intuitions of the Mind," 
Part 2, Book I, Section VI: "We know self in 
every one of its states as these pass before con- 
sciousness. Herein lies an important difference 
between the knowledge we have of the mind, 
and the greater portion of the knowledge we 
have acquired of the universe. . . . The greater 
part of the knowledge we have of our organism 
and of objects in contact with it, is derivative. 
And there is a process of inference in all that 
we know of objects at a distance — of sun, 
moon, stars, hills, rivers, valleys, and of persons 
and coimtenances, and conversations of our 
friends. But in regard to our own minds, we 



Register of Correct Morals 7 

know all the individual facts, directly and in* 
tuitively. We gaze at once at the mind, thinking, 
imagining, feeling, resolving. In this view it 
may be safely said that we know more of certain 
of the states and of the actions of the mind than 
we know of the whole material universe, even in 
this age of advanced science. . . . Our sensa- 
tions, our perceptions, our elaborated thoughts, 
our moral cognitions, and all our necessary 
convictions are under our immediate view.^^ 

To say that we may know these mental 
phenomena more than we know the material 
universe in this advanced age of science, may be 
challenged from the fact that but few people 
go to the trouble of bending the eye of the 
mind backward upon itself. Introspection is a 
difl&cult process. But few people try to philoso- 
phize. Hence, we may say that the marvelous 
mechanism of the mind, as it is, is known to but 
comparatively few people, in comparison with 
the teeming multitudes. But to offset this, it 
may be said that the number of people is not 
large who study and know scientifically material 
phenomena. And much of the knowledge thus 
gained is, as Dr. McCosh says, of an inferential 
character. We cannot say that the knowledge 
which is gained through sensation and thence 
by perception is absolutely accurate. 



8 The Shrine Invisible 

What is Truth, may well be asked of any 
one of the senses, for the senses do not always 
reveal things as they really are, but rather as 
we judge them to be. Very few persons see 
things exactly alike, and were our vision magni- 
fied a thousand-fold, how differently everything 
would appear. Blood to the natural eye appears 
red, but when placed under a good microscope, 
so that the smaller particles are able to be 
discerned, it is discovered that blood really con- 
sists of a few red globules, floating in a pellucid 
liquor, and if we could magnify these smallest 
particles ten thousand times again, what would 
they look like! Truly, we do not know. So that 
this world, which seems to be so familiar to us, 
is really unknown, as to its real nature. As 
Locke says in his ^^ Essay on the Human Under- 
standing," the nominal essences of substances 
we may know, but when it comes to the real 
essences of substances, we are left in mystery 
almost wholly. Material phenomena are really 
more doubtful as to their nature, than are mental 
phenomena. Locke truly says, "Essay on the 
Human Understanding," Book 3, Chapter 6: 
*^ There is not so contemptible a plant or animal 
that does not confound the most enlarged 
understanding. Though the familiar use of 
things takes off our wonder, yet it cures not our 



Register of Correct Morals 9 

ignorance. When we come to examine the 
stones we tread upon, or the iron we daily 
handle, we presently find we know not their 
make and can give no reason of the different 
qualities we find in them. It is evident the 
internal constitution, whereon their properties 
depend, is unknown to us, for to go no further 
than the grossest and most obvious we can 
imagine among them, what is that texture of 
parts, that real essence that makes lead and 
antimony fusible, wood and stones not? What 
makes lead and iron malleable, antimony and 
stones not? And yet how infinitely these come 
short of the fine contrivances and inconceivable 
real essences of plants and animals, every one 
knows." 

Now the phenomena of the mind, to those who 
will take the pains, may be studied directly, 
and the product becomes positive knowledge. 
^The spirit of today is decidedly scientific and 
positive. There are those who have but little 
room for speculative philsosophy. '^The phys- 
icist," says McCosh, ^^who has kept a register 
of the heat of the atmosphere at nine o'clock in 
the morning, and the naturalist who has dis- 
covered a plant or insect, distinguished from 
all hitherto known species by an additional 
spot, conceal their contempt for a department 



lo The Shrine Invisible 

of inquiry which deals with objects which cannot 
be seen, nor handled, weighed, or measured." 

The Place of Conscience in the Mind 

Among the faculties of the mind is found a 
class distinct by itself, which bears on the 
morals, and this class is readily divided into 
three different sections, each section united, 
forming a chain of three links. But care must 
be exercised in placing each Hnk in a proper 
position. The three sections are called the 
Appetites, Physical and Mental, the Will, and 
the Conscience. The physical appetites are 
shared alike by brutes and man, i.e., hunger, 
thirst, sex. The mental appetites, or appeten- 
cies, which seek for gratification are knowledge, 
esteem, society, power, property. If man had 
no power to control the physical appetites he 
would be placed even lower in the scale of 
intelligence than the brute. But the mental 
appetites are Hkewise to be held in check. And 
the regulator of the appetites is the Will. We 
are permitted to choose any particular principle 
so long as that principle does not interfere with 
the one above it. If the question be which shall 
be satisfied, the desire of property or the desire 
of knowledge, the lower desire must always 
make way for the higher. It must be a choice 



Register of Correct Morals ii 

of the highest supreme end. The will controls 
the appetites. There are times when higher 
principles must be forfeited for those which are 
lower. If a question of health, for instance, 
interfere in the acquisition of knowledge, the 
will decides and should decide in favor of health. 
But we have unconsciously wandered into the 
third section, viz., that of conscience, which is 
responsible for the term " should." Seated above 
the Will sits Conscience, as on a throne, reveal- 
ing moral law. Right and wrong are placed 
before the mind by Conscience. Conscience 
says *Hhou shalt" or ^Hhou shalt not." The 
Will is not compelled to act, however, as Con- 
science demands. The Conscience addresses 
the Will. It says when hunger, thirst, sex, 
knowledge, esteem, society, power and property 
are to be gratified. The Appetites, therefore, 
do not rush on aimlessly to their ends, seeking 
mere gratification like a riderless horse, going 
whithersoever it pleases. Must the mind which 
hungers for knowledge be kept down by a 
grovelling appetite for strong drink, or by a low 
sensual appetite? No, man is not compelled 
to be thus trammelled by the appetites. The 
Will is their superior. But the Will has a wise 
regulator. The Will has a master. A master 
whose voice must be heard. That master, kind 



12 The Shrine Invisible 

if rightly used, but with sting Kke a scorpion 
if abused, is named Conscience. 

The Nature of Conscience 

Every faculty of the mind, doubtless, has to 
attend to some chief business. Hopkins says, 
^'The chief business of the conscience is to 
regulate our choices; as we choose a noble or 
base end, the conscience accordingly responds." 
Conscience, moral law. Divine Will! Three 
links of one chain. By means of conscience we 
recognize moral law. The moral law points to 
a Divine Will, which Divine Will resides in God. 
If man has a nature heaven-born, of a divine 
turn, it is his conscience. Conscience has its 
place in the human breast. In its pure state 
its utterances would be similar in character 
and binding on all to attend when occasion 
called it into action. Rothe, however, is quoted 
as saying, ^^The conscience of another has not 
the least binding force for me, but only my own; 
when an appeal is made to conscience, then all 
further discussion is cut off, then all objective 
arguments become powerless; whatever is a 
matter of conscience to me is to me a sanctum 
sanctorum, which none dare violate; nor does 
my conscience bind any one else.'' He makes 
the matter of conscience wholly personal and 



Register of Correct Morals 13 

subjective. This theory we hold does not prevail 
with McCosh or Wuttke, or Hopkins. 

A thing which is holy for me is holy for every 
one. That which is virtuous for one person is 
virtuous for all. A benevolent deed is good 
for one and all. That sin is deserving of demerit 
is a common moral conviction. The moral 
conviction as to an act has added nothing to it. 
The act would remain good or evil, even though 
no intelligent eye observed or imderstood. A 
moral good is a moral good to all inteUigences, 
whether in this world or some other. Conscience 
carries with it an obKgation to acknowledge and 
attend to moral good. ^^My conscience," 
says Wuttke, ^^is true only in so far as it is an 
expression of the moral idea." Hence, in so far 
as our conscience is an expression of the moral 
idea, the conscience of all intelligences is obli- 
gated to acknowledge it to be so, and will do 
so in so far as the general conscience is an 
expression of the Divine Will. 

Practically every one acknowledges that the 
conscience has a decidedly moral and religious 
turn. 

Cicero speaks of conscience as ''The god 
ruling within us." 

Washington called conscience "A spark of 
celestial fire." 



14 The Shrine Invisible 

F. B. Meyer defines conscience as "The 
judgment- seat of Christ in miniature." 

Joseph Cook defined it as ''The taste of the 
soul." It has nothing to do with policy or ex- 
pediency, but with the question of rightness 
or wrongness. 

Calderwood defines conscience as ''The 
faculty of the mind which intuitively recognizes 
moral law." It is not, according to his interpre- 
tation, a form of feeling, but rather a cognition 
of intellectual power. 

Wuttke says, "Consciencie is an integral part 
of God-likeness, and is per se of a religious char- 
acter." Bishop Butler's famous statement, that 
if conscience had strength and might as it has 
authority and right it would rule the world. 

McCosh says that we all have a conscience 
which prepares us for discriminating between 
good and evil, but it is not till a voluntary action 
is presented that we pronounce a decision. 

Thomas H. Green claims that no individual 
can make a conscience for himself; he needs 
a society to make it for him. Calderwood claims 
that the individual should rise above environ- 
ment, custom, and education and forge ahead 
for himself. 

Hopkins says that conscience is strictly 
personal and resembles the tribunal of God in 



Register of Correct Morals 15 

judging of choices and motives. He states, in 
''OutKne Study of Man/' page 284: ''The 
nature and office of the conscience are given by 
the Apostle Paul when he says, 'For when the 
Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature 
the things contained in the law, these having 
not the law are a law unto themselves, which 
show the work of the law written in their hearts, 
their conscience also hearing witness^ and their 
thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing 
one another.'" In this, says the author, we see 
that the law is one thing, while conscience is 
another. The acts are done by man, the "bear- 
ing witness" and "excusing" are done by 
conscience. 

Charles Darwin's theory of the origin of the 
conscience is unique. He never made the claim 
that animals have a conscience. He did claim 
that animals possess that out of which man 
makes his conscience. In the animal world, 
he says, we find the instinct of sociabiHty and 
reflection. But we find these two instincts in 
man. Sociability in animals is evidenced in 
fishes going in schools, birds in flocks and cattle 
in droves. The animal has the sense of shame 
and the sense of fear and self-approbation and 
affection. He illustrates. A hunting dog had 
a litter of puppies. The owner wanted to go 



1 6 The Shrine Invisible 

hunting. The dog wanted to go along. She 
followed for a while, but finally turned back to 
her kennel, either through shame at the thought 
of leaving her puppies, or affection for them. 
In this we see reflection. Darwin claims that 
these instincts of sociability and reflection, 
possessed aHke by animal and man, have not 
developed in the animal into what we call 
conscience. The animal has the elements out of 
which conscience is made, but not in their proper 
proportion. 

The evolutionist was present when conscience 
began; and it had its beginning in the human 
breast. Darwin's interpretation is as follows: 
"At the moment of action man will follow the 
stronger impulse. This may occasionally prompt 
him to noblest deeds. It will commonly lead 
him to gratify his own desires at the expense 
of other men. After gratification, when past 
and weaker impressions are judged by ever- 
enduring social instincts, and by his deep regard 
for the good opinion of his fellows, retribution 
will surely come. He will then feel remorse, 
repentance, regret, shame. Shame, however, 
relates almost exclusively to the judgment of 
others. He will resolve to act, more or less 
firmly, differently for the future; and this is 
conscience J' With rare skill he has produced a 



Register of Correct Morals 17 

fine theory of the origin of the conscience. In 
this theory the moral element is present. There 
is plenty of room for the imperious word, 
"Ought." But the rehgious turn which we find 
in others, is wholly lacking. He could not bring 
it in and be consistent with his philosophy. 

The Conscience Educated 

Joseph Cook in his lecture, "Is Conscience 
Infallible?" says, "Beware how you put your 
finger on the quivering needle of conscience, 
and forbid it to go North, South, East, West; 
beware of failing to balance it on a hair's point; 
for whoever tutors that primordial necessary, 
imiversal, infalUble perception, tutors a personal 
God." This is truly positive and strong lan- 
guage. No words more startling or forceful 
could be quoted in support of the theory that 
conscience cannot be educated. He practically 
deifies the conscience. Makes it not simply the 
voice of God, but only a hair's-breadth removed 
from being a God itself. "A strange utterance," 
declares Dr. Keigwan, in his book "The Heart 
Side of God": "With the mistakes of conscience 
ever thrusting themselves before us in our own 
experience and with a multitude of examples to 
be found in history. We see how the conscience 
of Saul of Tarsus was warped in his confession, 



1 8 The Shrine Invisible 

'I verily thought with myself that I ought to 
do many things against the name of Jesus of 
Nazareth.' His heart had been filled with malice 
and hatred against the Christian Church. But 
after his conversion, his conscience underwent 
a change. Immediately what was right to do 
heretofore now becomes a wrong, and vice 
versa." With these words presenting an oppo- 
site theory, words almost equally as strong as 
those of Joseph Cook, we are immediately con- 
fronted with the fact that there are two theories 
concerning this subject. 

One theory is that it is impossible to enlighten 
or educate the conscience. It always speaks 
the truth. It cannot be perverted. Kant says, 
^'An erring conscience is a chimera." Calder- 
wood says: ^ Conscience cannot be educated, 
whether in the sense of instruction or training. 
As well teach the eye to see, the ear to hear, as 
teach reason to perceive self-evident truth. . . . 
Conscience presenting self-evident truth is 
unerring." He quotes Whewell as saying, "We 
must labor to enlighten and instruct our con- 
science." But says Calderwood by way of 
comment. If we labor to enlighten and instruct 
our conscience, we regard it as deficient in guid- 
ing power and authority, and place Understand- 
ing above it, and Butler's claim of the supremacy 



Register of Correct Morals 19 

of conscience is lost. Three things stand or 
fall together; conscience intuitively recognizes 
moral law; conscience is supreme authority; 
conscience cannot be educated. An imerring 
conscience presents a true ideal, but the indi- 
vidual is held responsible for self-development 
and self-direction. The manner in which man 
shall conduct himself is left with the individual. 
Calderwood claims that that which is called 
an erring conscience is incorrect, but, accurately 
speaking, should be called a faulty moral senti- 
ment, which is not to be trusted. If our thought 
be faulty, the moral sentiment will be faulty, 
and in order to get the moral sentiment righted, 
the thought must be corrected and man must 
take charge of his own thought. The trained 
thinker can easily do this; but it is difl&cult for 
the savage to get away from the blackness of 
superstition and the customs and practices 
of his people. 

We claim with Calderwood that the con- 
science does intuitively recognize moral law, 
and we think that McCosh holds to that theory. 
But while it thus intuitively recognizes moral 
law, it is subject to perversion and can be edu- 
cated. Wuttke's Ethics, Vol. 2, Sec. 78, claims 
that the conscience is the revelation of divine 
will to the moral subject as given in rational 



20 The Shrine Invisible 

self-consciousness. It is given at first only in 
germ, and must be developed. Two agencies 
are at work in its development, God and man 
himself. It is not a ready-made power. As 
the human race develops morally, the conscience 
becomes clearer and richer in its contents. Con- 
science has lost its purity and power such as it 
once had in the sinless state. This because 
of two reasons: First, because man has fallen 
away from God; second, the development of 
the conscience is dependent upon the moral 
training of others. That conscience which is 
not a God consciousness is a perverted, un- 
anchored one. The conscience can be awakened, 
cultivated and refined by human instruction. 
This coincides with the theory of McCosh, who 
holds that the conscience will respond or operate 
when occasions present themselves in volun- 
tary actions. If the function of the conscience 
is simply to respond "yes'' or "no" when an 
appeal is made to it, or to swing back and forth 
like the regular motions of a pendulum, or when 
an appeal is made to it, it unerringly responds 
with accuracy, and cannot respond other than 
right; we ask, what then is wrong, as in the case 
of the Hindoo mother who feels she must throw 
her babe in the sacred river Ganges, and whose 
conscience condemns her unless she does? We 



Register of Correct Morals 21 

are told that she has a grossly perverted moral 
judgment. Her conscience has responded to 
the deed as truly as the steel to the magnet. 
But we contend that if all this is the territory 
of the moral judgment, there is but little left 
to the domain of the conscience. 

There are but few philosophers who believe 
that the conscience cannot be educated. Calder- 
wood acknowledges that even IntuitionaKsts 
advocate the education and enlightenment of 
the conscience. If a faulty moral sentiment is 
to blame, which results in a faulty judgment, 
so that a Hindoo woman feels obligated to drown 
her babe in the waters of the sacred river Ganges, 
and it is not a perverted conscience, what has 
become of the knowledge of moral law, which 
conscience intuitively reveals? It certainly has 
dropped entirely out of sight, never to return 
in her Hfetime, or the Ufe of her children, or her 
children's children, until there is a different 
education or environment. Call it faulty moral 
sentiment, if you please, and say that a dif- 
ferent state of affairs would exist under proper 
education, and the conscience would again ap- 
pear to view and work again, like a picture of a 
great master, which for centuries has been con- 
cealed under smoke, dirt and other coatings, and 
again brought to the surface through certain 



22 The Shrine Invisible 

chemical appliances known to the arts. Still 
conscience reveahng intuitively moral law, as 
it should, has disappeared, and undoubtedly 
faulty education and improper environments 
are largely responsible. That conscience is 
largely dependent upon environment and edu- 
cation is disputed by but few mental philoso- 
phers. The conscience of a man of the South 
during the Civil War was the exact opposite, in 
character, to that of a man of the North. If 
the North and South could have exchanged 
places geographically, with all the education and 
environment pecuKar to each section, the results 
to the conscience would have been the exact op- 
posite to what they really were. General Grant 
might have surrendered his forces to General 
Lee at Appomattox Court House. It was no 
more of a sin for a Southern man, so far as his 
conscience accusing or excusing him, to seize 
and run to the market a score of terrified Ne- 
groes, during the war, than to hurry to market 
from the grasp of an enemy a hundred horses 
and cattle. The cannibal who eats his fellow- 
men is just as conscientious in what he does as 
the Christian who kills and eats a lamb. What 
has become of the conscience if it has not become 
perverted? The conscience has now apparently 
swung to the opposite pole, now diametrically 



Register of Correct Morals 23 

opposed to the dictates of conscience, as it 
came directly from the hand of God, the Law- 
giver, revealing moral law. Why should not 
conscience be thus perverted as well as other 
mental faculties? It would appear as though 
the conscience were almost as sensitive to the 
environment and education and customs of 
people, ever playing upon it and causing it to 
respond, as the magnetic needle to the approach 
of steel. 

Thomas Arnold well says: "Men get em- 
barrassed by the common cases of a misguided 
conscience; but a compass may be out of order 
as well as a conscience, and the needle may 
point due South, if you hold a powerful magnet 
in that direction. Still the compass, generally 
speaking, is the true and sure guide, and so is 
the conscience; and you can trace the deranging 
influence on the latter, the conscience, as well 
as the former." 

With this philosophic truth as a guide, we 
can easily imderstand some of the positions that 
great and good men have taken. Who can 
doubt, says a writer, that General Polk, who 
for many years had been the imiversally and 
highly beloved Bishop of Louisiana, was just 
as conscientious in his advocacy of slavery, and 
in his defense of the Southern Confederacy, as 



24 The Shrine Invisible 

was Bishop Simpson, in his opposition to slavery 
and his advocacy of the Union cause? General 
Pendleton was a revered doctor of the Protes- 
tant Episcopal Church, and the President of a 
Seminary near Alexandria, and during the war 
of the Rebellion, as a General, he never gave 
an order to fire without first raising his eyes 
heavenward and saying, '^God have mercy on 
their souls!" Was he not just as conscientious 
in his behef that slavery was justified by the 
teachings of God's Word, and approved of God, 
as John Wesley was in the belief that ^'Slavery 
was the sum of all villainies '7 Stonewall Jack- 
son was another devout Confederate. His Bible 
was his constant companion. He prayed while 
he marched, prayed while in camp, and even 
prayed, we are told, while directing the move- 
ments of a battle. Was he not just as conscien- 
tious in his behef that slavery was right as 
Wendell PhilKps was that slavery was wrong 
— in his opinion that the Southern Confederacy 
should succeed, in order to make slavery per- 
petual in this country as Abraham Lincoln was 
that the Union forces, by the help of God, 
should succeed in order to save the Union and 
to stamp out slavery forever from American 
soil? Prayers went up from both sides. Prayers 
that came from just as devout hearts, just as 



Register of Correct Morals 25 

sincere and conscientious, on one side as on the 
other. No one will deny that. Everything 
depended upon one's perspective. The position 
and education of the individual would color his 
conscience. There is a world of truth in what 
Hopkins says of conscience: 'Conscience re- 
garded as a whole may become more and more 
sensitive and pervasive, or it may become 
blunted and seared. The man may become 
hardened, 'past feeling,' 'twice dead,' 'plucked 
up by the roots'; or his path may be that of the 
just, 'shining more and more imto the perfect 
day.' " It seems as though no stronger or truer 
words could be used with which to close this 
section. 

Conscience May Lie Dormant 

While conscience apparently swings to the 
opposite pole, this is not done in the course of a 
generation or even of two of sinful environment, 
and bad education. Undoubtedly centuries 
must elapse, before the cannibal can eat his 
dinner of human flesh, with as good grace as the 
New Englander his turkey dinner and plum 
pudding. The voice of conscience can, in a 
sense, be silenced. The possibility of putting 
out the spark of conscience was acknowledged 
in the maxim of Washington, when he said, 



26 The Shrine Invisible 

^^ Labor to keep alive within your breast that 
spark of celestial fire called conscience." We 
are told that several activities of the soul cannot 
take place at the same time. Knowledge of 
objects comes to us through several avenues 
at the same time, i.e., through more than one 
of the senses. Through two or three senses at a 
time knowledge comes to us. But only one 
activity of the soul takes place at one time. 
This is illustrated by the necessity of the student 
to cultivate the power of attention. If he per- 
mits his mind to wander over every field at will, 
while attempting to study, he might as well 
close his book. So the sensualist succeeds in 
drowning his conscience by plunging into a life 
of worldly pleasure and enjoyment; the miser, 
by harboring the desire for money; the appli- 
cant for honor, by being completely absorbed 
in the struggle for supremacy and power. Con- 
science under such circumstances is forced down 
but not out. Its tones are muffled. There is a 
legend which sailors love to tell, that off the 
coast of France, there lies a buried city, and on 
a still night, when their vessels are rocked on 
the deep, the muffled tones of the bells in the 
steeples of the buried Churches, can be heard, 
tolling forth a dismal, doleful sound. So the 
muffled tones of conscience can be heard, though 



Register of Correct Morals 27 

drowned by a life given up to sensuality and 
greed and worldly emolument. Now and then 
conscience comes to the front the chief activity 
of the soul. 

Conscience Overpowers the Will 

Conscience at times is overpowering, over- 
whelming. "Conscience," says Wuttke, ^^is 
not within the control of man, but is a power 
above him. It may be silenced temporarily and 
led astray in its particular utterances as a dis- 
criminating power, but it can never be eradi- 
cated. Strictly speaking, it is not the person who 
has the conscience, but the conscience that has 
the person. A man may become imgodly, may 
be imconscientious and yet not be free from the 
power of conscience. He may deprive himself 
of his eyes, but not of his reason, and conse- 
quently not of his conscience.'' Conscience 
rides down as supreme master of the Will. 
That Will which has charmed serpents, tamed 
the Hon, led the elephant, controlled the forces 
of nature, compelled the thunderbolt to become 
his messenger, harnessed the wings of the winds, 
has in turn been overpowered by the conscience. 
Man in its clutches has been shaken as a tree 
by the fierce blasts of winter. Conscience lifts 
itself, cowers the will-power, and sweeps away 



28 The Shrine Invisible 

all other thoughts, holding man in its clutches 
as a slave. Why cannot man rid himself of 
torturous thoughts? Why is he totally de- 
feated? Why do thoughts of death and of the 
judgment and the fear of meeting an angry God 
torture the one unprepared to die? An infant 
awakes in the night and cries for something it 
knows not what. So conscience, drowned, sub- 
dued by a Ufe of sin, awakes and even the skeptic 
cries out with a sense of guilt and a fear of im- 
pending danger, like one who hears and feels but 
cannot see, the sullen ocean waves, snapping 
and hissing at his feet like serpents which cannot 
be seen, but can be felt and heard in a dark, 
murky night. There are occasions that will 
call forth the action of conscience in spite of all 
efforts to repress it. Back of conscience is an 
invisible Judge, who is God. Some one has said 
that conscience is the only remaining tie which 
binds man in his sinful and degraded state to 
God. F. B. Meyer calls it the ^^judgment-seat 
of Christ in miniature — that every man carries 
this judgment-seat inside of himself and day 
after day stands before it and seated upon it is 
the son of man to whom all judgment is com- 
mitted." Jay says, ^Xonscience is a bosom 
friend or a bosom fury; it is God's vicegerent 
on earth; His tribunal within; the quarter- 



Register of Correct Morals 29 

sessions before the grand assize." Among the 
ruins of an old temple, sometimes a slender 
pillar remains pointing heavenward, a reminder 
of past magnificence; so conscience stands 
amidst the ruins of degraded human nature as 
the lone witness of original righteousness. Even 
in the mind of the heathen we find it — per- 
verted, unsafe, misleading. Still a reminder of 
the past magnificence of the old temple. It 
points to God as the original Lawgiver. Con- 
science declares that there is an indelible dis- 
tinction between right and wrong, good and 
evil. He who implanted that conscience must 
love the good, and an unperverted conscience 
would lead us to love the good and hate the 
evil. 

Conscience May Speak at Any Moment 

A guilty conscience may come to the front 
at any time and pale the cheek of its victim. 
Fire lies hidden under ashes, and is betrayed 
only by the rising smoke. An unexpected gust 
of wind may fan the slumbering embers to a 
flame. The serpent in the winter seems lifeless, 
frozen, dead; but it is only numbed by the cold, 
and when brought by the fire will feel, uncoil, 
and hiss and sting again. So conscience may be 
numbed into apparent apathy for weeks and 



30 The Shrine Invisible 

months together by a life of guilt and sin. Sud- 
denly it is aroused by an unforeseen cause, a 
word, an act, a hint. Why was it that we read 
^^ Felix trembled" and not Paul? Yet who was 
FeKx and who was Paul? FeKx was a judge and 
Paul was a prisoner. One would think that the 
tables would have been turned. But not so. 
Felix was the man with the guilty conscience. 
Paul had arraigned him before the bar of his 
own conscience. He had preached of temper- 
ance, of the necessity of keeping, by means of 
the will, in restraint, unbridled appetites and 
passions. He had preached of righteousness and 
reasons with Felix, of the necessity of right 
living, of justice between man and man. He 
had thundered forth arguments, on the judg- 
ment to come. And Felix, living in adultery 
with Drusilla, brought before the bar of his own 
conscience, trembled. Perhaps his conscience 
had not disturbed him much for months. He 
had given his unbridled appetite full reign. But 
now conscience suddenly makes him tremble. 

Belshazzar's knees smote together as he read 
the handwriting on the wall — even amidst the 
feast of good things and surrounded by the out- 
ward pomp of an Eastern King. Why? An 
imintelligible inscription had appeared on the 
wall. Others saw it. Nobody else trembled, 



Register of Correct Morals 31 

so far as we know. Had the writing been in- 
terpreted, it might have conveyed to him good 
news. But he had an interpreter from within. 
Guilt read between the Hnes. 

Josephus says that Herod's conscience was too 
strong for his creed. When he heard of the fame 
of our Lord, conscience compelled him to say in 
a hoarse whisper: ^^It is John the Baptist; he 
is risen from the dead." He was a Sadducee, 
and did not beHeve in the resurrection of the 
body; but in his fright he forgot that. Con- 
science dug up a buried John, in whose burial 
he had had a hand. Many a man is unsafe and 
wretched because his reputation is poised on 
the still tongue of a companion in guilt. 

Conscience is at Times Unbearable 

The mental agony which follows the lashes 
inflicted by a guilty conscience is at times un- 
bearable — enough to turn a man's heart into a 
veritable hell. In the other world it may be the 
worm that never dies, and the fire unquench- 
able. The agony becomes in this world so great 
further existence is unendurable. Judas Iscar- 
iot was lashed by the furies of a guilty con- 
science. He saw before him an innocent Christ, 
whom his hands had betrayed. It was con- 
science that forced the agonized words from his 



32 The Shrine Invisible 

lips, "I have sinned in that I have betrayed 
innocent blood." The silver, the price of Him 
he had betrayed, he threw away. It burnt his 
pockets, his hands, and branded him as a 
villain. Then with mind aflame kindled by the 
firebrand, a guilty conscience, he went out and 
hanged himself. 

Shakespeare's representation of the ruins of 
Richard III is a striking illustration of the 
torture of a guilty conscience. On the eve of 
the decisive battle which was to cost the king 
his throne and his life, his guilty conscience 
comes to the front. Awful visions disturb him 
in his sleep. The spirits of those whom he had 
murdered appear before him, and pass sentence 
of condemnation upon him. Upon awakening 
the accusations of conscience continue: 



"O coward conscience, how thou dost afflict me! 
The lights bum blue. It is now dead midnight. 
Cold, fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh. 
What do I fear? Myself? There's none else by. 
Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I. 
Is there a murderer here? No — yes, I am. 
Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why ; 
Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself? 
Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? For any good 
That I myself have done unto myself? 

no 1 Alas, I rather hate myself 

For hateful deeds committed by myself! 

1 am a villain: Yet I lie — I am not. 

Fool, of thyself, speak well; Fool, do not flatter. 



Register of Correct Morals 33 

My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, 
And every tongue brings in a several tale, 
And every tale condemns me for a villain. 
Perjury, perjury, in the highest degree; 
Murder, stern murder, in the direst degree, 
Throng to the bar, crying all — Guilty! Guilty! 
I shall despair. There is no creature loves me: 
And if I die, no soul shall pity me; 
Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself 
Find in myself no pity to myself? 
Methought the souls of all that I had murdered 
Came to my tent; and every one did threat — 
Tomorrow's vengeance on the head of Richard." 



In vain he tries to drown his troubles and 
down his conscience. In vain he disregards 
the accusations. But despair will not leave 
him. 

Contemplation of this side of the question 
may have led a imiversity professor recently 
to say in one of his lectures: ^Xonscience is a 
sense of approval or disapproval. Man would 
be happier if there were no such thing in the 
human breast. It brings about a sense of re- 
morse. A warning voice which says, ^I dis- 
approve.'" This not very lofty theory seems 
to coincide with a cynical French maxim which 
says, ^^The chief conditions of happiness are 
good digestions and no conscience." But, we 
ask, is not man on the whole far more happy 
because conscience does exist in the human 
breast? Conscience may lift its voice of warn- 



34 The Shrine Invisible 

ing. Conscience may afflict the evil-doer. But 
what of him who does well? Has he had no rec- 
ompense for heeding and obeying the warning 
voice? It is an unquestioned truism that the 
very highest product of a Christian civilization 
is to be found in the development of those 
persons whose conscience has been trained to 
quickly detect the wrong and as quickly decide 
in favor of the right. Is such a man tormented 
by his conscience, or is it a blessing to him? 
Such a man shines as the sun in the commercial 
world. His presence strikes terror to evil-doers. 
God used such a man as His agent in turning 
on the searchHght, and exposing the question- 
able methods pursued in the conduct of some of 
our great commercial plants. Monstrous cor- 
porations have grown rich and fat through law- 
less methods of business procedure. The 
effect of turning on the searchlight and exposing 
frauds which turn in millions of profits an- 
nually, will at first be bewildering to the com- 
mercial world. Men of affairs will be temporarily 
embarrassed, and great business interests will 
suffer. A spirit of unrest will set in, for a con- 
fiding public has been grossly deceived. And 
he who has been foremost in bringing about the 
exposure of those who have unlawfully profited 
in the game, will be denounced as a demagogue, 



Register of Correct Morals 35 

and a menace to the commercial interests of the 
comitry. But a reaction soon sets in. An 
aroused pubKc conscience not only hastens to 
his support, acclaiming him to be a public bene- 
factor, but also not infrequently is such a person 
honored by having great pubHc honors bestowed 
upon him. 

An aroused public conscience constantly 
plays upon the political life of a nation, like 
the Spirit of God that brooded upon the face 
of the deep. The political arena affords ample 
opportunity for unscrupulous men to play their 
game. Many have not only become fat and 
flourishing, but have become prominent political 
leaders, despite their unclean politics. The 
people for a time are hoodwinked, and permit 
themselves to be towed along by such leaders, 
but not always. Exposures are generally bound 
to come, for wrong-doing works to the surface, 
like a needle in the flesh. And these political 
vampires, that have sucked the blood out of the 
nation, are suddenly halted, and brought before 
the court of public opinion, over which an 
aroused conscience presides. Men are shocked 
at the depths of degradation to which their 
representatives have plunged. All manner of 
uncleanness is exposed to public view. Public 
officials riding into pubUc ofiice, on corrupt, 



36 The Shrine Invisible 

unscrupulous methods, and growing rich on 
graft. Having to deal with conscience may be 
an uncomfortable asset for the unscrupulous 
business man or the poUtical vampire, whether 
it be his own, or the conscience of others. But 
to the man of excellent parts, it is heaven's 
best gift. And the benefits derived from an 
aroused public conscience are inestimable. The 
people of the United States of America are now 
reaping plenteous benefits therefrom. That 
person who possesses such an aroused con- 
science, will be a shining mark in the world. 
As Tennyson said of Prince Albert, so may it 
be said of this highest product of a Christian 
civilization: ^^He wears the white flower of a 
spotless Kfe, in the fierce Hght that beats upon 
a throne, and blackens every spot." Such a 
man has peace within himself, and this is a 
treasure worth coveting. Is this God's method, 
a sort of wireless telegraph system, by means of 
which he signals man His approval of his acts? 
Conscience is an index finger pointing to 
eternity. Why should one be apprehensive as 
to the consequences of his deeds in this life? 
Why should death be dreaded if death but usher 
the soul into the land of Silence, where no one 
speaks and no one weeps? If there be no future 
Ufe, what matters it how one lives? We beUeve 



Register of Correct Morals 37 

that the very existence of this monitor within, 
is an evidence of the reality of the future hfe. 
Like the flaming sword placed at the East of 
the Garden of Eden, which turned every way, 
so conscience points not exactly "every way/' 
but in two great general directions. It points 
toward man's sinless state before the Fall. It 
is the slender pillar or memorial that remains 
of man's pristine glory. It links the remote past 
with the present. Then it swings toward the 
exact opposite direction, pointing to eternity. 
It leads us to a throne, and would have us know 
that we shall behold the face of Him who sits 
thereon and to Him be answerable for the life 
Kved on earth. Truly conscience is a worm that 
has never died, and immortal do we declare it! 
What a marvel is man's mind! And among 
these intellectual treasures, that which bears a 
heaven-born image is conscience. Our purpose 
has been to show that the mind of man is a most 
wonderful reaUty. That in the mind the con- 
science has its place above the appetites, phys- 
ical and mental, and above the Will. Its 
office is to decide the rightness or wrongness 
of an act. It has to do with the moral and re- 
ligious Kfe of man, and is influenced by our 
education and environment, and that to abso- 
lutely silence it is impossible. Furthermore, 



38 The Shrine Invisible 

we have shown that the conscience is at times 
overpowering, overriding all other thoughts, 
demanding to be heard and liable to spring to 
the front at any time and to the guilty as a 
worm that never dies, leading its victim to 
boundless despair, and finally that its very ex- 
istence in the human breast is an evidence of a 
future life. 

When we see the force and power of the opera- 
tions of the conscience of man today, as it 
bears on all practical thinking and acting, we 
are led to ask what must it have been in its 
pristine glory before sin entered into the world? 
If it casts its beams of hght out upon life's 
pathway, revealing to man both the right and 
the wrong and pointing with index finger to 
the moral law and to the great God who is its 
Author, even in man's present condition, how 
clearly must it have performed its duty before 
mian fell! In man's sinless state it existed in 
its full purity and power. That pristine glory 
is not ours to have in this earth Hfe. But he 
who walks closest with God and lives in an 
atmosphere of highest morals and in touch with 
the best products of civilization will find his 
conscience will be to him — the Palladium of 
Correct Morals. 



IS THE WORLD GROWING 
BETTER? 



"Were the whole world good as you — 
Not an atom better — 
Were it just as pure and true, 
Just as pure and true as you; 
Just as strong in faith and works; 
Just as free from crafty quirks; 
All extortion, all deceit; 
Schemes its neighbor to defeat; 
Schemes its neighbors to defraud; 
Schemes some culprit to applaud — 
Would this world be better? *' 



IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 

The individual conscience reaches its highest 
development in a Christian country In the 
pure Hght of God's revealed law, it registers its 
decisions with accuracy and precision, in the 
realm of right and wrong. If the highest de- 
velopment of the conscience is to be found in a 
Christian country, and if the number of Christian 
countries were never more numerous, powerful 
and influential, than today, how is it possible 
under such circumstances for any person to 
believe that the world is growing worse? ^ 

There are those who laugh at the childish 
fears of children, who are afraid to be left alone 
in a dark room for fear of seeing ghosts, and at 
the youngster who whistles in the night to 
keep up his courage. But we frequently find 
men and women who are constantly expecting 
ghosts of some sort to put in an appearance. 
The imagination pictures all sorts of uncanny 
creatures whose province it is, to scare folks. 

1 "Is the World Growing Better," was prepared for publi- 
cation by the author, and appeared in the columns of ''The 
Christian Advocate," New York, under date, June 23, 1910. 



42 The Shrine Invisible 

One of the common tendencies of life is to fret 
over the crossing of bridges which have an 
existence only in the mind. Jane Taylor tells 
of a pendulum that got out of sorts one gloomy 
morning. It began to calculate how many 
times it would have to swing back and forth in 
an hour, a day, a week, a year, ten years. And 
what happened? The pendulum, utterly ap- 
palled at the result, stopped, and could not be 
induced to start again, until it was made to see, 
that all it had to do, was to swing back and forth, 
once in the moment next to it, and in this way 
the whole ten years would be covered. So it is 
with the uncanny creatures of the imagination, 
which rise up to torture us. Many of them have 
no reaHty at all. And those which do have 
reality, when we get where they are, are not so 
frightful as our imagination would picture them 
to be. 

This world is a pretty bad world, if we look 
at it thro' colored glasses. There is a great 
deal of selfishness in the world. The rich are 
trampling on the rights of the poor. Speed is 
glorified at the expense of life and limb. The 
unfeeling heart of the selfish man is evidenced, 
in the occupant of the automobile, who strikes 
his victim a blow unto death, or leaves him 
maimed and bleeding along the roadside. Lynch- 



Is the World Growing Better? 43 

ing is organized murder, and is condoned in 
certain sections of the country, and is on the 
increase. And divorces increase to sixty thou- 
sand in a single year. Vast corporations have 
grown lawless and corrupt and conscienceless. 
And powerful labor unions lock arms with them 
and the struggle becomes so fierce, that the rights 
of the community are often forgotten. As Dr. 
Van Dyke says, ^^ Gilding covers a multitude of 
sins.'' Then we do not think, our corporate 
interests place a proper value on human Kfe, 
and properly safeguard those who are employed. 
In our American mines alone, one man is killed 
on an average every three hours, for every day 
in the year. If we should speak of the besetting 
sin of the church, we should say, it is the spirit 
of indifference. Many members of our churches 
seldom attend the services, and many never 
come at all. Yet despite these self-evident 
facts, when we lift our eyes in other directions, 
we see evidences that the world is growing 
constantly better. There are people who see 
only the disagreeable. The day is fine, — but 
it is a pesky weather-breeder. The person is 
homely. The rheumatism is worse. That 
person may be honest, — but. One always 
finds what he looks for. He who looks for 
trouble will find plenty. He who looks for sin 



44 The Shrine Invisible 

will find it. He who looks for ash-heaps, and 
garbage barrels, will find them. But a man 
will live just as long, and be happier, if he looks 
for goodness, and for good people, and for good 
apples, and for roses, and for birds, and for 
beauty, in the heavens above, and in the earth 
beneath. 

To the pessimist, this world and the people 
in it, must seem, much Hke a gnarled, shrivelled, 
sour apple tastes. The pessimist has been likened 
imto a colored man, on a dark night, with a 
dark lantern, looking for a black cat, in a dark 
cellar. Anybody can kick and lament about the 
good old times. A Dutchman was seated on a 
load of hay, driven by a team of mules. As he 
approached the bam, he discovered to his con- 
sternation, that the load was too high, to admit 
him and the load too, thro' the barn door. He 
determined to teach that team of mules that he 
was the master of that occasion. So when the 
mules got the team near the barn, he threw up 
both feet against the beam, to stop the load. 
But the mules went right on, and never so much 
as knew that there was a Dutchman on board. 
The Dutchman was scooped off, and landed on 
the ground. So let the pessimist kick on, if he 
can get any satisfaction out of his job. Let him 
sigh for the good old days. The world will 



Is the World Growing Better? 45 

pursue the even tenor of her course, and will 
not know that the poor pessimist is on board. 
The pessimist and optimist were never more 
wittily defined, than in the following lines: 

" 'Twixt optimist and pessimist 
The difference is droll, 
The former sees the doughnut — 
The latter sees the hole.'* 

Ella Wheeler Wilcox has given to the world 
these charming lines: 

"Oh, the earth is full of sinning, 

And of trouble, and of woe, 
But the devil makes an inning 

Every time you say it's so; 
And the way to set him scowling 

And to put him back a pace, 
Is to stop this stupid growling 

And to look things in the face. 

"If you glance at history's pages. 

In all lands and eras known. 
You will find the vanished ages. 

Far more wicked than our own. 
As you scan each word and letter, 

You will reaHze it more. 
That the world to-day is better, 

Than it ever was before." 

There is sin in the world, but it is constantly 
going into hiding. Some things that move, are 
too small to be seen by the naked eye. We can- 
not see the hour hand move on the watch, nor the 
earth revolve on its axis. But at the end of the 



46 The Shrine Invisible 

hour, or of the day, we know that both have 
moved. So we have no microscope to see that 
the world is any better on Saturday night than 
it was the preceding Saturday night, or was 
any better this Christmas, than it was last 
Christmas. But after a century, we see signs of 
progress, both morally and spiritually. 

Government is more just now than ever 
before in the history of the world. Compare 
the government of today with the government 
of Rome imder the Caesars, when kings mur- 
dered their nearest relatives, thro' jealousy, or 
suspicion, or revenge. Where is there to be 
found a more just or humane government than 
that exhibited by a great Christian nation? In 
the siege of Troy, we are told that Achilles 
defeated his bitter enemy Hector. After killing 
him, he tied his body to his chariot, and then 
drove furiously around the city walls twice, and 
later laid the mutilated body at the feet of his 
wife. Compare this method of celebrating 
the victory of arms with the magnanimous 
manner in which Grant accepted the surrender 
of Lee. We hear Grant saying, ^^I will instruct 
my paroKng oJB&cers, that all the enlisted men 
of your cavalry and artillery, who own their 
horses, are to retain them, just as the officers 
do theirs. They will need them for the spring 



Is the World Growing Better? 47 

plowing and other farm work." This sort of a 
spirit is the product of a Christian civilization 
and worthy of a Christian nation. We are seem- 
ingly approaching an era of imiversal peace 
among the great nations of the earth. An era 
when war shall be no more. When Scripture 
prophecy shall be fulfilled. The President of 
the United States, Wm. H. Taft, foremost 
among the world's statesmen, favors the es- 
tablishment of a Court of International Arbi- 
bration. King George, of England, and the 
Czar Nicholas, of Russia, look with favor upon 
such a plan. Andrew Carnegie helps forward 
the peace problem by the establishment of a 
ten milHon dollar Peace Foundation. He 
follows his money up with his pen. He has an 
incisive way of putting things in print. The 
'Christian Advocate" recently quotes an ex- 
tract from one of Mr. Carnegie's pubhshed 
letters. ^^Men no longer eat each other; they 
no longer kill prisoners, or sack cities, or poison 
wells, and men of civilized countries no longer 
buy or sell each other. It is sure that there will 
be many who hear these words who will also 
hear before they take their departure, that the 
civilized nations of the world have banished the 
killing of man by man as a means of settling 
international disputes." 



48 The Shrine Invisible 

In this day there is drunkenness, and much 
drunkenness. But it is no compliment to get 
drunk, and no credit comes to the one who sells. 
The word ''Temperance^^ means today, what it 
never meant before. A century ago, about the 
most advanced thinking, in regard to the tem- 
perance question, was that intoxicants were 
harmful when used to excess. But it was no 
uncommon thing for church ofl&cials to drink 
in the open. Ministers would drink. Indeed, 
the late Prof. Borden P. Bowne of Boston 
University said, "Time was when it took 
thirty-five barrels of cider to get one minister's 
family thro' the winter.'' We have all read how 
liquors were freely exposed at church celebra- 
tions. One hundred years ago the liquor business 
was a comparatively respectable business. In 
every village grocery, the barrel of whisky was 
plainly visible, indeed, it occupied a place of 
honor, for it sat midway between a barrel of 
vinegar and a barrel of molasses. The barrel 
of whisky was just as important as that of the 
vinegar or molasses. But, as Dr. Geo. C. 
Wilding tersely puts it, "The people have come 
to see a great light." It has gone into hiding, 
behind screens and blinds, and has lost forever 
its air of respectability. The mark of the beast 
has been stamped upon it. And he who sells 



Is the World Growing Better? 49 

the poison becomes stigmatized. His business 
excludes him from practically every fraternal 
organization. His wife and family are com- 
pelled to suffer socially, and he is not wanted 
in our churches until he gives up his business. 
And in England the Government has seen fit 
to declare that the saloon is no fit place to dis- 
play an American flag. Going even farther 
than we had thought to go. The saloon finally 
entrenched itself in politics. For many years 
it dictated terms to the political parties. But 
thanks to the many thousand intelligent, in- 
dependent voters of the country, who refuse to 
swallow the sop, administered to them by im- 
principled party bosses, the saloon is being 
steadily driven out of politics. And now we 
have the saloon on the run as it never was 
before. We are told that the four candidates for 
President of the United States, at the last presi- 
dential election, were all total abstainers, viz., 
Wm. H. Taft, Wm. Jennings Bryan, Eugene V. 
Debs and Eugene Chafin, State after state is 
swinging into the no-Ucense column. Forty-one 
million people of the United States live in no- 
license territory. Nine states are under state- 
wide prohibition. And every state except 
three, Nevada (save the mark), Pennsylvania, 
and New Jersey, thro' their Legislatures, gives 



so The Shrine Invisible 

the people the right to exclude the saloon as 
fast as the people themselves make the demand. 
No such era for the cause of temperance has 
ever been known. 

Duelling, once a code of honor, is outlawed, 
and frowned upon as murder. Among the 
students of German Universities, it was once 
considered a badge of honor, to carry one or 
more scars received in a duel battle. That 
sentiment is rapidly passing away. 

Gambling, which was once the diversion of 
gentlemen, is today in the eyes of the law a 
felony. 

A college in New York City was founded on 
a Lottery, — a thing absolutely impossible in 
this day. 

The social vice, flaunted by Lord Byron, 
would today slam the door in his face. 

Then, the ethical code was never higher than 
it is today. The moral standard was never 
higher. Would one note signs of progress? 
Let him examine the contents of the Holy Bible. 
Compare the ethics of the Old Testament with 
the ethics of the New Testament. In the light 
of the teachings of Jesus, much of the Old Testa- 
ment ceases to be a standard for Christian life. 
However unpleasant the facts, it is a matter of 
record that ^'Father Abraham" handled the 



Is the World Growing Better? 51 

truth very carelessly at times, and was rebuked 
by Pharaoh, the Egyptian, and AbimeHch, the 
Philistine. And the polygamy of the Patriarchs 
would almost outgeneral the Mormons. And 
the divorce laws of Moses find no comparison 
in the teachings of Jesus, on this subject. We 
shudder at the slaughter of the enemies of 
the Jews, as told with an apparent reKsli in 
the Book of Esther, and dare not admire the 
womanly feelings of Queen Esther, when she 
asks that the bloody massacre be continued 
another day. The Hebrew Scriptures faith- 
fully report to us, the laws and spirit of those 
times. But when we compare the laws and spirit 
of those times with those of the present day, 
we cannot help but thank God, that we are 
Kving in the lap of the twentieth century, and 
not in the ^'good old days" of the past. 

Then the ethical teachings of the Pagan 
philosophers would not be tolerated for a 
moment today. Socrates sneered at the grief 
of a mother who wept at the loss of her babe. 
Plato advocated every city, selecting some 
distant hilltop, and there constructing a pen for 
the exposure of weak and unwelcome children, 
and urged that physicians should not prescribe 
for the incurably sick. Aristotle urged laws, 
making it compulsory for parents to drown 



52 The Shrine Invisible 

unhealthy children, and Seneca said, "We 
separate the unhealthy ox and horse, from the 
healthy ox and horse, and it is not wrath but 
reason which teaches us that unhealthy children 
should be separated from the healthy." Our 
answer to this sort of philosophy in the twen- 
tieth century, is our asylums, and hospitals, and 
homes of various kinds, and the money and 
time that are annually spent along lines of 
charity and benevolence. 

Then what strides have been made along the 
lines of moral upUft in Literature. It is true 
Art and Literature are not perfect. Anthony 
Comstock and his colaborers have still some 
work to do. But we pass by the smaller fry, 
and compare the Kterature which has come to 
us from world-famous men. Contrast the 
ethical teachings of the poetry of two or three 
centuries ago, with the wonderful volume of 
pure Hterature which enriched the world during 
the Victorian Era. Even a twentieth century 
Shakespere would not dare write some of the 
things the sixteenth century Shakspere did. 

Then the gospel of Christ exerts a greater 
influence for good today, than ever before. In 
fact the world's betterment, in the instances 
cited, can be traced directly to the influence 
of the gospel. The gospel of Christ pulsates 



Is the World Growing Better? 53 

with life everywhere. It is felt in politics, and 
in business, and in society, and in literature. It 
is felt everywhere. Talk about a decadent 
church! He who thus talks, measures the power 
of the gospel by an absence of old-fashioned 
spectacular conversions. Religion today means 
Life. Living according to Christian standards. 
Wm. Jennings Bryan said, *^ There is more true 
altruism in the world today than ever before, 
and Christianity is the cause. Go to the lands 
where Buddhism and Mohammedanism or Con- 
fucianism reign supreme, and you will find that 
except for the few things they have borrowed 
from the Christians, they have stood still for 
two hundred years or more. Christianity has 
lifted up nations in Europe, that ten centuries 
ago were sunk in the mire of obloquy. History 
shows it is Christianity that has helped to make 
the greatest nations." Alongside of the testi- 
mony of Colonel Bryan, we place that of William 
H. Taft, President of the United States. In an 
address before the Federal Council of Churches 
of Christ of America, Mr. Taft said, he had been 
impressed by the benefits which the people of 
the PhiHppines had received from the churches. 
He believed that the noticeable improvement 
in the world's civilization was directly attribu- 
table to the influences of the churches. If ever 



54 The Shrine Invisible 

one were qualified to speak with authority, 
as the result of travel, study, observation^ 
and the practical experience of an official of 
the United States, surely Mr. Taft is thus 
qualified. 

Christian nations are building the greatest 
cities the world has ever known. Christian 
nations are giving to the world the marvels in 
the field of invention, and discovery. Trans- 
portation has never been excelled. In one 
street in New York City, there are four trains 
running one above the other : two above ground, 
two below ground. In some of the fine arts we 
may not have surpassed the Masters. But 
music never had so many votaries since the 
morning stars sang together. The standard of 
intelhgence was never higher. And civilization 
never more Christian, and more humane, and 
more charitable than at the present time. When 
the tourist of today visits some of the dungeons 
in which human beings were once incarcerated, 
he is filled with horror. 

Then our people have not lost interest in the 
problems of the Christian church. It is an era 
of Freedom of Thought, and of an untrammelled 
conscience, and for this we should be devoutly 
thankful. Time was when men were burnt at 
the stake, and beheaded on the scaffold, or 



Is the World Growing Better? 55 

strangled in a dungeon, for no greater offence 
than the simple reading of God's word, or the 
translation of it. And there was no Christian 
nation to protest. Men were mutilated and 
murdered for advocating religious freedom. 
Would any one care to go back to those "good 
old days"? 

Is the church decadent, dying out, when the 
people who go to make up our nation, that of 
the United States, are wiUing to contribute 
from thirty-five to forty million dollars for new 
churches, and new parsonages? In other words 
from seventy to eighty tons of gold. Is the 
church decadent or dying out when our thirty- 
three million church members have invested 
in this country in church edifices one billion 
and a quarter of dollars? Is the church decadent 
or dying out when we are building annually on 
an average of from twelve to fifteen churches 
every day in the year? Is the church decadent 
or dying out, when we have added to our com- 
mimicants during the past eighteen years, an 
average of nearly a milKon a year? The world 
growing worse! Then our cause is a lost cause. 
The Christ is defeated. He who believes in his 
Bible cannot remain a pessimist. Right and 
Truth will reign. The triumphant Christ will 
be the Victor. 



56 The Shrine Invisible 

"This world is not so bad a world 
As some would like to make it, 
But whether good or whether bad, 
Depends on how you take it." 

"The world they say is gettin' old, an' weary as can be, 
But write me down as sayin', it's good enough for me! 
It's good enough with all its grief, its pleasures and its pain, 
An' there's a ray of sunshine, for every drop of rain! 

They stumble in the lonesome dark, they cry for light to see. 
But write me down as sajdn', it's light enough for me; 
It's hght enough to lead us on from where we faint and fall. 
An' the hilltop nearest heaven wears the brightest crown of all. 

They talk about the fadin' hopes that mock the years to he; 
But write me down as sayin' there's hope enough for me. 
Over the old world's wailin' the sweeter music swells, 
In the stormiest night I listen and hear the bells — the bells. 

This world o' God's is brighter than we ever dreamed or 

know. 
Its burdens growin^ brighter, an' it's love that makes it so. 
An' I'm thankful that I'm livin' where love's blessedness I 

see, 
'Neath a heaven that's forgivin' where the bells ring 'Home' 

to me." 



ALONG THE GOSPEL TRAIL 



Look at the footprints of Christ, and see whether they are 
a man's or God's. Whose prints are those by the gate of 
Nain, by the grave of Bethany, coming away from the tomb of 
Joseph of Arimathea? Whose prints are those by the doors 
of sorrow, along the path where the leper, the bhnd, the lame, 
the demoniac waited for him? 

J. R. Miller, D.D. 



ALONG THE GOSPEL TRAIL 

There is a natural law in the physical world 
that like begets like. In the spiritual world 
this same law holds true. Badness does not 
beget goodness. Goodness does not beget 
badness. The age in which we live is very 
practical. Everything must be submitted to a 
test trial. A lingering suspicion seems to lurk 
in the minds of most people, that things and 
persons are not exactly as represented. This is 
doubtless due to the existence of so much 
counterfeit and hypocrisy in the world. In 
this day of testing and analyzing everything, 
Christianity has not escaped the fiery ordeal. 
It has been tested and pronounced good by 
friend and foe. If the fruits of the gospel are 
good, then Christianity must be good, but if the 
fruits are bad, then the sooner we close our 
churches, and burn our Bibles and unfrock our 
preachers, the better. 

Wherever Christianity comes in touch with 
the human race, it serves to ennoble, uplift, 
and elevate. It almost works transformations. 
The photograph of a heathen before embracing 



6o , The Shrine Invisible 

Christianity, and a year afterward, could scarcely 
be taken for the same person. When it touches 
the slums of our cities, the effect is at once 
pronounced. Filth and rubbish disappear. 
There is an old adage that "cleanliness is next 
to godhness." Under the Mosaic law, cleanli- 
ness was the handmaid of godliness. The 
sanitary regulations of the famihes, camps, and 
cities of the children of Israel were just as 
strict as this reHgious observance. Cholera is 
called Asiatic, and it comes from countries 
where humanity lies festering in filth and sin. 
"The Bubonic plague has risen from its lair 
in the Orient, and stalks thro' the Golden Gate 
at San Francisco. All that keeps it out of the 
great cities of this great nation is the power of 
medical science, sprung from a christian civili- 
zation which keeps it at bay." When there is 
no medical science, born of a christian civiliza- 
tion, then plagues and pestilence rage fiercest. 
The wonder is, what stops the awful blight of 
plague and pestilence among the heathen 
millions, without the aid of medical science. 

Then science and inventions flourish under the 
fostering care of Christianity. They are scarcely 
in evidence at all among Pagans or heathen. 
There are those who seem to beUeve that the 
Bibk is opposed to science. There is no correct 



Along the Gospel Trail 6i 

science when the people have no Bible. There 
is not a scientific book to be found anywhere 
today worth two cents a pound at a paper mill, 
unless written under the influence of God's 
word. A skeptical gentleman once declared 
that the progress of humanity was due to the 
printing-press and steam-engine, and not to 
the Bible. Humanity undoubtedly owes a 
great debt to the influence of these two great 
engineers of civilization. But whence came the 
first printing-press? From the brain of some 
Hottentot? Whence came the first steam- 
engine? Whence came the first locomotive? 
And the first sewing-machine, and reaper and 
binder, and steam thresher, the telegraph and 
telephone, and wireless telegraphy, and inven- 
tions so manifold and varied as to be almost 
bewildering? Can one important invention be 
named as having come from the fertile (?) brain 
of the heathen? Some one has declared that 
there is not enough inventive genius in India to 
invent a milking stool. During the nineteenth 
century, four hundred and fifty thousand patents 
were issued in the United States and seven 
eighths of the entire business of the country 
rests upon them. The British home steam-power 
is equal to the labor of four hundred milUon of 
men, or twice the number of able-bodied males 



62 The Shrine Invisible 

of the world. Thro' the inventive genius of a 
christian civilization, distance has practically 
become a thing of the past. That word of 
scripture has been fulfilled, when applied to the 
sphere of sciences, ^' Their line is gone out thro' 
all the earth, and their words to the end of the 
earth," if the ^^line" shall represent the trans- 
continental telegraph and ocean cable systems, 
and the ^^ words" represent the telephone. The 
battle of New Orleans, of the war of 1812, was 
fought after a treaty of peace had been agreed 
upon, and the war ended. General Taylor and 
General Packenham had not been informed that 
the war was over. Our means of communica- 
tion was so slow. Thro' the means we now 
employ, when the battle of the alHed Powers was 
fought before the walls of Peking, we knew by 
dark each day, the result of the morning's fight. 
We knew the outcome of the contest in China 
quicker than we knew of the result of the Battle 
of Gettysburg fought less than forty years ago. 

The highest morals and purest virtues are 
always to be found in a christian country. 
Even infidels will acknowledge this. Voltaire 
was once asked, where in his opinion, the highest 
morals, and purest virtues were practiced, where 
the Bible was read, or where it was not. With- 
out any hesitation he replied, "Where the Bible 



Along the Gospel Trail 63 

is most widely read." He was then asked where 
in his opinion the Bible was most widely read. 
His answer, ''In Scotland." Yes, old Scotland! 
What a tribute to christian living, and to the 
worth of the Holy Scriptures. Dear old Scot- 
land! the land of the Bonny Brier Bush. The 
land of John Knox, and his prayers. The land 
of old-fashioned Sabbath observance, and Bible 
reading, and church attendance. "What is it," 
said a messenger of a heathen king to Queen 
Victoria, ''What is it, that makes England 
great?" The Queen sent the messenger back 
with a copy of the Bible, and this reply, "Tell 
your King, it is this book that has made England 
great." Senator Chauncey M. Depew once said, 
"There is no government which has liberty in 
it that lasts, which does not recognize the Bible. 
When you show me a colony of ten thousand 
people, who have come to live decently by the 
teachings of infidelity, I may then beheve it." 
It may be disputed, when we affirm that there 
is less crime in a Christian country than in a 
non-Christian country. We hear more about 
crime, where there is a high degree of civiKza- 
tion, and a keener distinction between right and 
wrong. That there are more arrests today, in 
proportion to the population, than there were 
one hundred years ago, does not necessarily 



64 The Shrine Invisible 

prove that conditions are worse. There may 
be various reasons assigned for this condition of 
affairs. Our contention, throughout the pages 
of this book, has been, that in the highest stage 
of Christian civiKzation, conscience will he at its 
best. The effect of this will be manifest in all 
practical living. Where can one go to find such 
a complex condition of a heterogeneous popula- 
tion? Several of our large cities consist of many- 
smaller cities, each with a great foreign popula- 
tion of some distinct foreign nationahty, yet all 
massed together, within the Hmits of one great 
city. Would not a million foreigners pouring 
into our country in a single year affect our civili- 
zation, touching every phase of our national Kfe? 
Yet our nation seems to digest, or absorb, this 
motley horde, without any perceivable difficulty. 
Difficulties in the digestive process will be out- 
wardly apparent, in the slums, as it works to 
the surface in the shape of lawlessness and 
crime. 

During the past one hundred years there has 
been a radical change in the mind of the people 
as to what constituted the right, and what the 
wrong. We esteem to be essentially wrong, 
what our forebears thought proper and right. 
As the result of this change of moral judgment, 
conscience has had to adapt itself to these new 



Along the Gospel Trail 65 

conditions. Was there ever a time when the 
conscience was so sensitive as at the present? 
The Kne of demarkation between good and 
evil, right and wrong, was never more clearly 
defined. Men are arrested today for offences 
which would not be considered such a few score 
years ago. What constitutes crime today would 
be decided differently not only by our Courts 
of Criminal Procedure, but also by the Court of 
Public Opinion. Mr. Havelock Ellis, in his 
book, ^^The Criminal," says, ^^That those whom 
we call enemies of society, are only following 
impulses which were praiseworthy in another 
age, and which are even in this age practiced 
by a great many people who flourish in the 
front ranks of our industrial civilization." To- 
day men are being punished as criminals for 
offences for which in a prior generation an arrest 
was not even made. We are gathering criminal 
statistics with microscopic minuteness. The 
telegraph, the telephone, the wireless telegraphy, 
and skilled ofl&cers of the law, as well as the daily 
press, all are enemies to crime. Rev. Edward 
Everett Hale, who was a leading New England 
clergyman, and author of repute, said: ^'My 
own opinion is founded after as careful a study 
as I know how to give. I am quite aware that 
reports do not enable one to speak confidently. 



66 The Shrine Invisible 

But my strong impression is that any apparent 
increase in crime is due to the increase of civiliza- 
tion — to the increased severity of the law, and, 
therefore, to the increase of arrests. For in- 
stance, one hundred years ago drunkards hardly 
appeared among prisoners, in a world where 
most men were drunk. Now every prison re- 
turns drunkards, who are guilty of no offence, 
but intemperance. I believe that the experts 
most skilled will say, that the real amount of 
crime known to the law is less than it was one 
hundred years ago." 

It is conceded that Hfe is safer in a Christian 
country than in a non-Christian country. An 
infidel will acknowledge this. The story is told 
of two men, who were travelling in the far West, 
when it was far different from what it is to- 
day. One traveller was infidelic in his views, 
the other a Christian, Rev. Dr. Adam Poe, 
afterward agent of the Western Methodist 
Book Concern. They had several discussions 
on the subject of religion. They took turns in 
choosing what was considered a safe place to 
camp for the night. One night they had reached 
an unusually wild section of the country. It 
was the time for the skeptic to choose the site 
for the evening encampment. He went out 
to reconnoitre, and was gone for some time. 



Along the Gospel Trail 67 

When he returned his face wore a look of evident 
satisfaction. Dr. Poe asked him if he had found 
a safe place to camp for the night. He replied 
in the affirmative. He was asked if he were 
sure about it. Again an affirmative answer. 
Then he was asked what made him so confident. 
After some hesitancy, he replied, that he had 
run across a cabin with one window in it, and 
looking in he saw a venerable man, and his 
wife with some young people, all seated. The 
Bible was spread out before the old man. After 
reading, all knelt in prayer. Did the infidel 
humbly acknowledge that the fruits of the 
gospel were good or bad? Would the report 
have been the same, had he seen a wild looking 
man, whirKng a knife, or examining a belt of 
revolvers, or looking over the smooth muzzle 
of a gun? 

Akin to safety of life, is that of safety to 
property. A Christian church and a Christian 
community are the best possible poKce protec- 
tion. Who would not prefer to live in a town 
and own property there, a town of ten thousand 
inhabitants, having eight or ten churches, and 
two or three thousand church communicants, 
with one or two pohcemen patrolhng the streets, 
than to Kve in that same sized town where there 
were no churches, no church communicants, but 



68 The Shrine Invisible 

the police force increased to fifty? Ex-police 
Commissioner McAdoo, of New York City, 
once said, ^^Were it not for religion and the 
faith behind it, there are not enough policemen 
in all the world to keep order in New York 
City." In commenting on this Dr. J. M. 
Buckley said in the * Christian Advocate," 
''The reliable police-force is the conscience in 
a man's breast. Without that a city would be a 
collection of wild animals, deceiving and being 
deceived, devoured and being devoured." The 
Jews have a saying, and one worthy of being 
often quoted, ''If the world did but know the 
worth of good men, they would hedge them 
round about with jewels." 

Another fruit of the gospel is the increased 
value it renders to property. Churches, school- 
houses, seminaries, colleges and brown-stone 
front houses, always appear grouped together. 
There is another group quite the opposite, 
saloons, reeking tenement houses, squalor and 
filth. Often those who are not connected with 
the church, give royally to its support, because 
they feel they owe something to the church, 
because of the enhanced value it gives to their 
property. Many business men cheerfully con- 
tribute for this reason. We read of a shrewd, 
dissipated Wisconsin lawyer who said: "The 



Along the Gospel Trail 69 

first Sunday-school that was organized in this 
county, I ran myself. A few American settlers 
came here early. We wanted to get decent, 
industrious settlers to move in, and keep the 
worthless rowdies out. I said to the others: 
A Sunday-school will draw the people we want, 
and it will be the cheapest way to blow up the 
settlement. They all agreed. Not a soul of us 
pretended to have a grain of piety. But they 
pitched on me to carry out the scheme. We 
ran the school all summer. Several Christian 
families moved in, and I soon handed the school 
over to them, as they had a better stock of piety 
on hand. We secured a good moral settlement. 
In fact the people became so pious that I had to 
move out myself. These shrewd business men 
saw that the influence of Christianity enhanced 
the value of their property.'' 

Then Christianity ^^ fathers and fosters a spirit 
of charity." Christian people are giving people. 
If we go beyond the pale of the Bible, we go 
where the hospital and asylum and homes of 
various kinds are imknown. There is a legend 
that when Christ lived on earth, wherever 
his feet pressed the earth, beautiful flowers 
sprang up, and gave of their fragrance to man- 
kind. We know this to be true, that wherever 
his gospel has been preached, in its path the 



70 The Shrine Invisible 

most delightful fruits have flourished to bless 
the lives of men. Bishop Greer, of the Protes- 
tant Episcopal church, New York City, said: 
^^The first hospital ever founded was by a 
Christian woman named Fabiola, in the fourth 
century. The first house for lepers, founded by 
a Christian Bishop. The first retreat for the 
blind, by a monk. The first free dispensary, by 
a Christian merchant. The poor-houses, es- 
tabUshed by Christians, had not even been 
thought of by Pagans, as being a part of their 
duty they owed to the state." London annually 
raises for charitable purposes over fifty million 
dollars. Yet what is the cry for help in our large 
Christian cities, by the poor and suffering, in 
comparison with the destitute and famished of 
heathen and Pagan countries. Intelligent travel- 
lers give it as their opinion, that one family out 
of four is constantly scant for food. One hundred 
million Chinese alone are underfed. Mr. Hol- 
combe says, in China there are no almshouses 
for the poor, and if there were in one month 
two thirds of the population would apply for 
admittance, if they were fed as well as are the 
inmates of our almshouses. 

Thro' the benign influences of Christianity 
we are living in a day, when we are doing, what 
Christ said would be done, when he said, 



Along the Gospel Trail 71 

'^ Greater works than these shall ye do." Man is 
doing these ^^ greater works/' and yet it is the 
Christ working in man, thro' the influence of 
the gospel. Christ today does not actually 
restore Ufe to the dead. Yet in a sense he does 
thro' practical Christianity. Our wisest Pagan 
Philosophers advised the weak and helpless, the 
incurable and those worn out thro' old age, 
either to be killed or exposed to death. There 
are heathen countries today, where this prac- 
tice is in vogue. In a province in Bengal, the 
population is decreased one hundred thousand 
annually by this unnatural crime. So today, 
Christ, thro' the preaching of the gospel, re- 
stores Kfe to the dead, for these helpless crea- 
tures, born into the world amidst a heathen or 
Pagan environment, were dead already, so far 
as there was any law to protect them. MiUions 
of dollars today are annually spent upon the 
weak, and helpless, and suffering, to prolong 
life and alleviate distress. 

Christ today does not actually restore sight 
to the blind, give hearing to the deaf, and speech 
to the dumb, yet in a sense He does, thro' the 
benefits of a practical Christianity. We read 
of a girl, blind, deaf, dumb, winning honors 
from a great university. Because God has 
given the world Gallaudets, and these have 



72 The Shrine Invisible 

been brought under the influence of Christian- 
ity, we see thousands born deaf taught articulate 
speech. We see the deaf reading the speech of 
others from the Ups with as great accuracy as 
by sound. Dr. Moon, who was born bKnd, has 
done more to bless mankind than thousands of 
men with two good eyes. When he was born his 
mother said, ^^Oh my darling babe, must you 
go thro' the world blind? " As an old man. Dr. 
Moon stood upon a London platform and said 
he had been able to put the Bible into over 
seventy languages for the bUnd. As he said 
this, he seemed the happiest man there. 

Then thro' the influence of the gospel, dying 
is made easy. Here is where the benefits of 
Christianity reach their cHmax. He who has 
stood by the bedside of a dying scoffer or infidel 
will never forget it. What a deathbed! The 
soul going out into darkness, eternal night. 
No hope to offer, nothing to comfort those left 
behind. Shortly after the death of Mr. Voltaire, 
in Paris, a professional nurse was requested to 
attend a man who was dying. She asked, "Is 
the sick man a Christian?" "Why do you ask 
that? " said the messenger. The nurse answered, 
"I am the nurse who attended Voltaire in his 
last illness, and for all the wealth of Europe, I 
would never see another infidel die." How 



Along the Gospel Trail 73 

different the death of one of God's children. 
A death chamber has often seemed like the 
robing room for heaven, where the soul gets 
ready to take its flight. Before closing this 
section, we turn reverently to portray the 
passing of the Immortal Spirit of that great 
martyred chieftain, William McKinley. We 
quote the words of James Creelman, in ^'On 
the Great Highway." ^'In the afternoon of his 
last day on earth the President began to reaHze 
that his life was slipping away, and that the 
efforts of science could not save him. He asked 
Dr. Rixey to bring the surgeons in. One by one 
the surgeons entered and approached the bed- 
side. When they were gathered about him, 
the President opened his eyes and said: 

^'^It is useless, gentlemen. I think we ought 
to have prayer.' 

"The dying man crossed his hands on his 
breast and half closed his eyes. There was a 
beautiful smile on his countenance. The 
surgeons bowed their heads. Tears streamed 
from the eyes of the white-clad nurses on either 
side of the bed. The yellow radiance of the sun 
shone softly in the room. 

"^Our Father which art in heaven,' said the 
President in a clear, steady voice. The lips 
of the surgeons moved. 



74 The Shrine Invisible 

"'Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom 
come. Thy will be done' — 

''The sobbing of a nurse disturbed the still- 
ness of the air. The President opened his eyes, 
and closed them again. 

'"Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.' 

"A long sigh. The sands of life were running 
swiftly. The sunlight died out. Rain drops 
dashed against the windows. 

"'Give us this day our daily bread; and 
forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors; 
and lead us not into temptation, but deliver 
us from evil.' 

"Another silence. The surgeons looked at 
the dying face, and the friendly lips. 

"'For thine is the kingdom, the power, and 
the glory forever. Amen.' 

Amen,' whispered the surgeons.'^ 



iiC 



IS FAMILY RELIGION 
DECAYING? 



"If there be some weaker one, 
Give me strength to help him on; 
If a bhnder soul there be, 
Let me guide him nearer Thee; 
Make my mortal dreams come true 
With the work I fain would do; 
Clothe with Hfe the weak intent, 
Let me do the thing I meant." 

WmXTIER. 



IS FAMILY RELIGION DECAYING? 

The contents of this section may seem to 
savor of pessimism, in sharp contrast with the 
optimistic spirit of the preceding pages. The 
true optimist is not one who blindly refuses to 
see certain existing evil tendencies and con- 
ditions, but he is keenly ahve to the evils of 
the hour, and stands ready to sound his note 
of warning. That there are evils, and evils 
galore, no one will deny. It is pertinent that 
this question should be propounded in this day, 
when the searchlight of gospel truth beats so 
fiercely and clearly upon the individual con- 
science, revealing distinctly duty's path, "Is 
Family ReKgion Decaying?" ^ 

The phrase, "There is no place like home," 

carries with it but little significance to millions 

of children nowadays. The more popular 

rendering today would be, "Every place other 

than home." The glaring lights of the city, the 

streets, ball games, moving-picture shows, im- 

1 "Is Family Religion Decaying?" was prepared for 
publication by the author, and appeared in the columns of 
"The Western Christian Advocate," imder date, Sept. 20, 
1911. 



78 The Shrine Invisible 

moral posters advertising theatrical plays, and 
unsavory companionships all have a peculiar 
attractive power to children, luring them away 
from their homes. Many children turn in toward 
home, and that reluctantly, when there is no 
place left for them to go. They have ransacked 
every nook and corner for miles round about. 
Parents, in many instances, are tremendously 
to blame for this condition of affairs. The 
home has been dethroned to their children be- 
cause they, as parents, have never made an 
effort to have it enthroned in their thoughts 
and affections. The modern father spends but 
very Httle time in the companionship of his 
family. The time that is not consumed by his 
business or profession is devoted to lodges and 
clubs and social functions. These things doubt- 
less have a perfectly legitimate place in one's 
life, but they should never be substituted for 
the home. When such is the case, they have 
become a menace to the home. He who be- 
longs to so many lodges and clubs, and makes 
so many social engagements that he has no 
night in the week for his family, is not the father 
to his children they have a right to expect. 

The same is true of a mother. When she is 
so much absorbed in clubs, and immersed in 
fashionable fandangos as to cause her to forget 



7^ Family Religion Decaying? 79 

the claims her children have upon her, she is 
not the mother her children have a right to 
expect. In speaking of the rugged but homely 
features of Mr. Lincoln, Bishop Fowler said, 
^'If there is anything I hate worse than a yellow 
dog, it is a pretty man." We might add, What 
more detestable than to see a fashionably dressed 
woman, hugging to her breast a pug-nosed dog, 
while a nurse girl comes along in the rear carry- 
ing that woman's baby. There are women who 
would not be seen carrying their baby on the 
street, but who think it quite the thing to fondle 
and caress in public a flat-nosed dog. Women 
who like dogs better than they love children 
are not to be compKmented on the development 
of their sense of appreciation. We beheve that 
the home is the imit in society, and not the 
individual. If teaching is needed along a socio- 
logical Kne in our colleges and universities, it 
is to develop a deeper interest, particularly in 
this day, of the tremendous significance and 
sacredness of the home. Homes there are that 
are literally clubbed to death. A recent writer 
has pertinently said, "What is needed is a revival 
of the old-fashioned Home Club." 

The rage and craze today is for money, and 
the pleasure the money will procure. In 1852, 
we are told, there were but twelve millionaires 



8o The Shrine Invisible 

in the United States. Today there are over 
five thousand, and the crop is increasing every 
year. The dangerous classes are not the Jap- 
anese and Italians and Negroes; but money- 
seekers and pleasure-seekers, whose craze is for 
yachts and autos and Sunday excursions and 
French novels and German agnosticism and an 
ever-increasing tide of immorality which threat- 
ens the destruction of the modern home. 

God is pretty nearly crowded out of modern 
home life. The altar in the home has not simply 
been dethroned, it has practically ceased to be. 
The Presbyterian ''Banner'' once said, ^^When 
the altars of Methodism grow cold all Protes- 
tantism will feel the chill." And we add, when 
family religion decays the spiritual Kfe of the 
Church will be blasted. 

The slogan of today ought to be, "Back to 
the Family Altar!" "Back to the Family 
Bible!" It may sound old-fashioned, but some 
old-fashioned things are worth overhauling. 
John Randolph once said, "I should have 
been an atheist had it not been for the recol- 
lection and the memory of the time when my 
mother used to take my little hand in hers, and 
cause me to kneel at her knee and teach me to 
say, ^Our Father which art in heaven,' etc." 

Religious training in the home is almost a 



Is Family Religion Decaying? 8i 

thing of the past. If the home fails here, what 
can be substituted? Will the public schools 
answer? There is no religious training here. 
In many schools, where Catholics and Jews pre- 
dominate, the Bible is thrown out altogether. 
Good morals are not even taught. Some of 
our high schools have become breeding places 
of immorality. Will our state universities 
answer? Many of them are reeking with the 
teachings of agnostic professors, and some of 
our colleges connected with our denominations 
make the way slippery to a life of sheer skepti- 
cism. Will our secular press take up the work 
when the home fails? The majority of our 
great papers are simply money-making insti- 
tutions. A glance at the advertisements is 
sufficient to prove that. And another glance 
at the glaring headlines will be sufficient to 
convince that there is but little to edify even 
morally. Well, what of the pulpit? Will that 
take the place of the home in the religious edu- 
cation of the children? Children do not go to 
church. Not over lo per cent of the children 
of our Sunday-schools attend church services. 
Then think of the many thousands of children 
in our large cities that do not attend even 
Sunday-school. How strongly fortified is that 
home that is hedged about with prayer! In 



82 The Shrine Invisible 

this has been the secret of the strength of 
many a Christian: the morning look heaven- 
ward. Before one looks into the face of others, 
catch a vision of the face of Jesus. Before one 
listens to the hoarse voices of a selfish world, 
listen to the sweet cadence of the voice of the 
Master. B. M. Adams, of the New York East 
Conference, was once asked the secret of his 
strong grip on God, and replied that he made 
sure each morning to tie himself to the arm of 
the Almighty. Drummond once said, '^Five 
minutes alone with Christ in the morning would 
change the character of the whole day." The 
army of General Gordon knew, when the cur- 
tains of his tent were drawn at certain hours of 
the day, their general was getting his orders 
from the Great Commander. If prayer be 
such a tower of strength, spiritually, to the 
individual, coloring his entire Hfe, can the Chris- 
tian parent afford, yea, will he dare, rob his 
family of its power to bless and strengthen the 
members of that inner circle, by neglecting to 
keep the altar fires aglow? 

Some of us remember distinctly the home life 
of several years ago. All the children knew 
father's wishes, and knew, too, that he wanted 
them respected. Father wanted none of the 
children late at prayers, so all were downstairs 



Is Family Religion Decaying? 83 

early in the morning, ready for the family de- 
votions. What a beautiful scene! Father 
seated in his arm-chair, the well-thumbed Bible 
open. Close by sits mother and the children. 
Reverently and tenderly the Holy Scriptures 
are read, then all kneel, while the father, the 
priest in the home, invokes God's blessing on 
home and children. After prayers are offered, 
all are seated at the table. Every head is bowed 
while the father asks the blessing on the food. 
How happy and cheerful everybody seems! 
Then came the separations for the day. Even- 
ing repeats the scene. The hours of the evening 
are enlivened by music, playing simple games, 
bright, animated conversation, reading books 
and current literature. Then singing, prayer, 
and good-nights, and the day was done. This 
was Church Kfe in the home. But how different 
today! Home Ufe almost wholly without God. 
In the city it has become a fashionable boarding 
house, an apparent disposition on the part of 
husband and wife to board together. The 
modern home is run something after this fashion: 
Breakfast time; one by one the members of the 
household drop into the dining-room, and seat 
themselves at the table; the children frowsy- 
haired and fretful; no family altar; no blessing 
at the table; no thought of God. Indeed, it 



84 The Shrine Invisible 

is rumored that it has become unpopular and 
unfashionable to ask the blessing at the table 
in the up-to-date home. 

We learn today that young men are drifting 
away from the church as never before. There 
are over sixteen million young men in the 
United States between the ages of eighteen and 
thirty, and 75 per cent never darken the doors 
of our churches, while only 5 per cent are 
commimicants. We have a criminal popula- 
tion of seven hundred and fifty thousand, 
and 70 per cent of these are young men be- 
tween eighteen and thirty. There is something 
wrong. Something is out of gear. We believe 
that the taproot of the difficulty is to be found 
in a lack of religious training in the home. A 
young man walled about with family prayers 
from childhood will have a safeguard about 
him through which it will be difficult wholly to 
break. A thousand influences and sacred memo- 
ries will hold him back when sorely tempted, and 
will carry his thought Godward. According 
to the last religious census we have in this 
country today 21,663,248 Protestant church 
members, and counting five persons to every 
home 4,332,649 Christian homes. It is estimated 
that only one Christian home in eight has a 
family altar, and we fear that estimate is far 



75 Family Religion Decaying? 85 

too high. Place these Christian homes in a row, 
and we would pass through 3,791,068 homes 
before we would hear the sound of a father's 
voice at a family altar. From these homes 
one himdred and fifty thousand young men, 
having reached twenty-one, annually go out, 
never having heard a parent's voice in prayer 
at a family altar. 

What a beautiful poem is that by Robert 
Burns, ''The Cotter's Saturday Night." The 
Cotter stands for a representative type of 
Scotch. He is not wealthy. His position would 
pre-empt that. But he did have a home^ and in 
that sense he was rich. He knew as he ap- 
proached his home, Uttle affectionate children 
would toddle forth to greet him. And in his 
humble home, a loving wife would welcome 
him. A bright glowing hearth would invite to 
good cheer. With such thoughts uppermost in 
his mind, toil was sweet. The effect was, to 
^' quite forget his labor and his toil." Happy 
the man with a home of that kind, whether a 
Cotter, a Landowner, a Prince, or a King. 

The other members of the family finally all 
reach home. What a family gathering ! Father, 
mother, brothers, sisters. They are akin, not 
simply by the ties of blood, but there is a happy 
kinship of spirit, which sometimes does not 



86 The Shrine Invisible 

exist even among blood relations. A bright, 
aninmted conversation sets in, in which all 
take part. They have peculiar experiences to 
relate, and each is interested in the narrative 
of the others. The father now and then drops 
in a word of advice. 

"Be sure to fear the Lord alway, 
Lest in temptation's path ye gang astray. 
Implore his counsel and assisting might, 
They never sought in vain who sought the Lord aright." 

Finally all gather around the supper table. 
A young man has called to see the buxom 
daughter. He is invited to share the Highland 
hospitality. And now the meal ended, a most 
beautiful scene is enacted. Would that it might 
be repeated in every Christian home in America. 
All gather again around the fireplace. The 
father the priest in the home, has seated himself. 
Upon his knees he has spread the family Bible. 
He chooses a chapter with care, and says, *^Let 
us worship God." After the Scriptures are read, 
the Cotter kneels in prayer, in the midst of that 
family circle. 

"Then kneeling down, to Heaven's eternal King, 
The saint, the father, and the husband prays. 
Hope * springs exulting on triimiphant wing,' 
That thus they all shall meet in future days, 



Is Family Religion Decaying? 87 

There ever bask in uncreated rays, 

No more to sigh, or shed a bitter tear, 
Together hymning their Creator's praise, 

In such society, yet still more dear, 
While circling Time moves roimd in an eternal sphere." 

This was a genuine church service in the 
home. More lasting impressions of a religious 
character are made on the lives of young people 
than many a church service would make. The 
prayer was offered in behalf of that little family 
circle so dear to the heart of that father. That 
family circle, now unbroken and unstained by 
sin, may it so remain forever. Good-nights are 
said. The family retires for the night. The 
lights go out. Silence reigns, and God and 
angels vigil keep. 

Some one has said such a beautiful picture 
as Bums has given us in "The Cotter's Saturday 
Night" is impracticable here in America. Our 
modern method of hving pre-empts it here in 
this rushing, racing twentieth century. But 
it is just what America needs. Green has well 
said in his book, "The Gospel in Literature,'' 
"What we need is 'The Laborer's Saturday 
Night,' 'The Business Man's Saturday Night,' 
and 'The Professional Man's Saturday Night.'" 
We cite two illustrations, one furnished by the 
example of one of the Presidents of the United 
States, showing that it is practical in the 



88 The Shrine Invisible 

highest plane of social and ofl&cial life, the 
other furnished by a plain but substantial 
member of society. Col. W. H. Crook, in 
writing on the home Kfe of President Hayes, 
in the '^Saturday Evening Post,'' says: "It 
was Mrs. Hayes' custom to go into the Red 
Room in the early evening, after dinner, and sit 
down at the piano, gathering her children around 
her; then they would make a beautiful picture 
of family life, singing hymns, usually, but some- 
times during the week, sweet, old-fashioned, 
tender songs, other than sacred music. The 
President almost always was with his wife and 
children during this brief hour of music. It 
was his custom to go immediately afterward 
into the old circular library over the Blue Room, 
where family prayers were said regularly, just 
before the smaller children went to bed." 

The other illustration is furnished by the 
example of a well-to-do, but plain citizen of 
Morris County, N. J. He has a family of 
eight children, all Christians, but the youngest, 
still a child. On a Sabbath evening, the family 
gathered together for family prayers. The Bible 
was opened, and the father read the chapter 
which told about Absalom's defeat and death, 
and the tidings brought to King David, and the 
wail of the broken-hearted father over the death 



Is Family Religion Decaying? 89 

of the wicked son. Then he knelt in prayer, and 
offered a fervent, touching petition. As the 
result of the services held in that Christian home, 
— for it was nothing short of that — a man, 
once a school-teacher, was converted, and the 
next Sabbath presented himself at the altar of 
the church, and the writer received him on 
probation. Is it not possible for this to be 
duplicated in every Christian home in America? 
May there be a return to the family altar! 
May those broken down be set up again! If 
this were done what a different spiritual at- 
mosphere would prevail in our homes ! It would 
speedily extend to our churches, and from many 
a church prayer service the chill would be 
effectually removed. 



f 



IS GIVING A GRACE, OR 
A GRIND? 



"We shall do so much in the years to come, 
But what have we done today? 
We shall give out gold in a princely sum, 
But what did we give today? 
We shall lift the heart and dry the tear. 
We shall plant a hope in place of fear, 
We shall speak with words of love and cheer, 
But what have we done today?" 

Nixon Waterman. 



IS GIVING A GRACE, OR A GRIND? ^ 

If the latter be true, no wonder ^'hilarious 
givers" are so few. Malachi has an adroit way 
of saying things. By means of sharp, sudden 
turns he gives the mind of the modernist an 
unexpected jolt. In the art of asking dexterous 
questions, he is unsurpassed. These questions 
often are abrupt, pointed, heart-searching. He 
usually succeeds in piercing the armor of one 
most strongly fortified. 

The priesthood in his day had deteriorated, 
and his chief mission seems to have been to 
correct and rebuke them for their unfaithfulness. 
The priesthood having become corrupt, the 
natural consequence would be a corrupt people. 
When priests become mercenary and profane 
and sacrilegious and corrupt, what is to be 
expected of the people whom they serve? 

The sacrifice which the priests offered to the 
Lord was defective. This is evidenced in these 
searching words: "If ye offer the bhnd for 

1 "Is Giving a Grace or a Grind?*' was prepared for publi- 
cation by the author and appeared in "The Pittsburg- 
Christian Advocate" under date, March 21, 1912. 



94 The Shrine Invisible 

sacrifice, is it not evil? And if ye offer the lame 
and the sick, is it not evil? Offer it now unto 
thy governor: will he be pleased with thee, or 
accept thy person?'' (Mai. i:8). These are 
truly searching words. We understand at once 
what was going on among them. They offered 
the blind and the lame and the sick. It was not 
contended that no offering or sacrifice was made, 
but that the sacrifice that was made was 
defective. 

All this sounds tremendously modern. There 
are those today who present their offering, but 
it is defective. They give not as *'God hath 
prospered" them. There are those whom the 
Lord hath prospered, yet their gifts remain as 
they were when in extremely moderate circum- 
stances. There has been an inflow of wealth, 
but no corresponding outflow of generosity. 
They have "reaped boimtifuUy," but insist on 
"sowing sparingly." They remind one of the 
Dead Sea — no outlet. They receive the bless- 
ings of God, salt them down, and that is the 
last that even they themselves ever see of them. 
Their "mite" — yes, they still give that, when 
the Lord has given them millions. Pity it is 
that so many rich folk have appropriated the 
word "mite," which belongs only to the penniless 
widow. A woman of moderate circumstances 



Is Giving a Grace or a Grind? 95 

said she would not insult the Lord by putting 
five pennies on the collection-plate. She hated 
the sound of the jangle of copper. One of the 
things she always did on Saturday was to make 
sure that her coppers had been changed into 
nickels or silver. 

It is no compliment to the Lord to present 
him with a sacrifice or gift which is defective. 
Malachi declares the priests would not be guilty 
of such a breach of etiquette as that to earthly 
rulers — "Offer it now to your governor." 
When men make a presentation to their prince, 
it is of their best. Shall the Almighty receive 
worse treatment at our hands than we would 
render to our prince? We offer the best to our 
ruler, or "governor," because of the dignity 
attached to his high ofl&ce or position. Dare 
we offer less to the Eternal God, the High and 
Holy One? How can we hope to please our Lord 
by offering him our worst, when we had it in 
our power to offer him our best? Too often, 
by our acts we say: "Anything is good enough 
for the Lord.'' Two children were playing 
"Noah's Ark." They were taking the animals 
out of the ark; a couple of sheep had their legs 
broken off. They had heard something about 
the custom of sacrifice among the ancient Jews, 
and one said: "These are no good, 'cause they 



96 The Shrine Invisible 

can't keep up with the procession. Let's use 
them for a sacrifice." After self-denial week 
was over, little Tom was asked of what articles 
of food they had denied themselves. *^ Little 
Toms" always tell the truth, as this one did: 
"Pork and beans; 'cause we don't often have 
'em; and when we do, most of us don't like 'em." 
That spirit represents too much of our manner 
of sacrifice imto the Lord. If one loses a cow 
or a horse, or makes a bad investment, the 
scaKng-off process begins at the Lord's temple. 
The loss is charged up to the Lord's account. 

Why do we offer such defective gifts to the 
Lord? The answer is found in our own heart, 
namely, we want the best for ourselves. To 
the majority of folks we fear that giving is more 
of a "grind" than it is a "grace." Bishop 
Coxe tells of a man in western New York who 
puts five cents in the collection-plate on Sundays 
but who pays eight hundred dollars a season for 
an opera-box. "The Living Church" tells of a 
man who subscribed one dollar a Sunday toward 
general church expenses, but stopped payment 
during his winter excursions in the South, when 
he expended thousands upon himself and family. 
There are those who are so gold-leafed over 
with their wealth that the pores of generosity 
and liberality and Christian giving are closed 



Is Giving a Grace or a Grind? 97 

up. A good sermon is spoiled the moment 
dollars and cents are mentioned. Mention the 
urgent need of money, and follow it up with an 
appeal for funds to promote the interests of the 
Redeemer's kingdom, and the shouts of the 
saints are silenced, and their spiritual ardor is 
dampened. It is a study in character to watch 
the faces of some people fairly shining with an 
apparent inward glory during the dehvery of a 
forceful sermon, when at the close an appeal is 
made for money to support some great mis- 
sionary project or other benevolent enterprise. 
The spiritual thermometer suddenly takes an 
awful tumble. It would be something of a psy- 
chological feat for Dr. W. V. Kelley, author of 
"The Illumined Face," to solve the riddle of 
the glowing face and the leaden countenance 
of one and the same person under conditions 
as thus described. The ^^Epworth Herald" 
tells of a boy who was to impersonate a shining 
cherub in a play. He was coated over with gold- 
leaf. This eflfectually closed the pores of his 
skin, and before reUef could be procured he was 
dead. 

What a sorry spectacle does a Christian pre- 
sent who is gold-leafed over by his wealth! 
He may flatter himself that the wealth is all his 
own. "These cattle are mine. These sheep 



98 The Shrine Invisible 

are mine. The gold and silver in the mine are 
mine." But the Lord declares that they are 
his, and they are only loaned to us. ^^ Every 
beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon 
a thousand hills. . . . For the world is mine, 
and the fulness thereof." Again we read: 
"Occupy till I come." What man possesses 
has only been loaned to him. Houses and lands 
and property interests will all change hands 
during the next thirty years. The comptroller 
of the city of New York is quoted as having said 
that every thirty years practically all the prop- 
erty interests of that great city change hands. 

There are but few churches that really have 
an easy time with their finances. This straitened 
condition of so many church treasuries is not due 
to any dearth of money. Men have millions for 
luxuries. In the United States our people spend 
annually for candy, $78,000,000; for chewing- 
gum, $25,000,000; for soda-water, $320,000,000; 
for jewelry, $1,223,000,000; total for luxuries, 
$1,646,000,000; an average for each family for 
candy, chewing-gum, soda-water, and jewelry 
of $13.70. How would our church people relish 
a minimum assessment of $13.70 per family, 
annually, for the support of all church and 
benevolent work? What a howl would go up all 
over the land! But we hear of no great lament 



7^ Giving a Grace or a Grind? 99 

among church folk over the distressing state- 
ment that there has been a falling off this year 
in contributions for the cause of Foreign Mis- 
sions. Shall we admit that candy and chewing- 
gum and soda-water and jewelry are esteemed 
more highly by our Protestant people than the 
support of the Mission of the King? Shall we 
offer our best at the shrine of luxury, and bring 
the blind, and the lame, and the sick as our gift 
to be placed on the altar of our King? 

Millions of church people are paying absolutely 
nothing toward the support of the local church, 
or toward the benevolences. Has any family the 
right to cast the financial burden of the church 
on the shoulders of the few, and even forget 
it is resting there? There is a decline and decay 
of liberality among church-members. It has 
been stated that during the past thirty years the 
membership has increased three and a half 
times. But in the rate of giving there has been 
a falling off. The total gifts have increased 
fourfold. But the average amount per member 
is only one-half what it was thirty years ago. 
This means that a few are giving more and 
thousands are giving less, or nothing at all. 
Those who refuse to give can not plead poverty, 
for the church was never more able to be worthily 
supported. The claim has been made that over 



loo The Shrine Invisible 

thirty billion dollars are in the hands of the 
Protestants of this country alone. The claim, 
therefore, can not be made, ^^I am too poor.'' 
Some years ago a contributor to the ^ Christian 
Advocate" told of a Scotchman who was passing 
the collection-plate, and a man said: *^I am too 
poor to give anything." The old Scotch deacon 
repKed: ^^Then take something out, this col- 
lection is for the poor." Nearly every one who 
makes such excuse would refuse and resent 
proffered charity. 

The eighth chapter of second Corinthians 
ought to be studied by every member of the 
church. We have in that the foimdation for 
giving. Giving is exalted to a Christian grace. 
To pay is as much a part of the Christian's life 
as to pray. We are stewards of all that we have. 
Too much of the vitaKty of our churches is 
wasted upon members in trying to persuade 
them to help meet the expenses of the church. 
If God's stewards would settle their accounts 
with him freely, voluntarily, systematically, 
church fairs and oyster suppers and bazaars 
would speedily go into innocuous desuetude, 
and the task of the ecclesiastical money-raiser, 
with his corkscrew methods and grist of coarse 
jokes, would be at an end. Baptism and the 
Lord's Supper are called holy sacraments. But 



Is Giving a Grace or a Grind? loi 

the collection-plate is as truly scriptural as 
either, and takes precedence of either, as to 
scriptural details for giving. Paul elevated it 
to a grace. ^* Therefore as ye abound in every- 
thing, in faith, and utterance, and knowledge, 
and in all diHgence, and in your love to us, see 
that ye abound in this grace also." 

As denominations we differ as to creed and 
doctrine, but we are agreed as to the collection. 
We have all things in common in this respect. 
We hear it flaunted in our ears: ^^ Salvation is 
free." The interests of the King have suffered 
as a consequence. While salvation is free, it 
has cost tears, and suffering, and sacrifices, and 
money, and time, and hves to proclaim it to the 
world. Our suspicion is aroused when a so-called 
precious article is Usted away below par. A 
catchy notice in a morning paper may announce 
eggs, fruit, and fish away below the market 
price, but no one would recommend their pur- 
chase for delicate stomachs. Everything that 
is worth anything has cost somebody something. 
The Scriptures insist that all should give some- 
thing. In the Temple sacrifice there was pro- 
vision made for the poor — ^^two turtle doves, 
or two yoimg pigeons," and for the very poorest 
three and one-fifth quarts of fine flour. 

Somebody taught Cain and Abel the duty of 



I02 The Shrine Invisible 

sacrifice. The offering was neither gold nor 
silver placed on a collection-plate. These things 
represent the New Testament method of offering. 
But they made their offering as truly as he who 
today deposits his money-gift in the temple or 
church treasury. When Noah entered the ark, 
he took with him offerings suitable for sacrifice. 
Abraham gave tithes to Melchizedek. And 
Jacob began his religious life by setting aside 
one-tenth of all he had to the Lord. The prin- 
ciple of giving runs throughout the entire Old 
Testament Scriptures. In a different form the 
same principle is found in the New Testament. 
When the Holy Spirit fell upon the people at 
Pentecost, a consecration of wealth followed, to 
be used in the work of the church. Holy men 
were set aside — or elected, as we would say in 
common parlance today — whose business it 
was to have supervision over these funds. These 
undisputed facts are sufficient to give anyone a 
pretty good jolt who opposes church collections. 
He who gives scripturally will exalt the principle 
to a grace, instead of debasing it to a grind. 



MEN AND THE CHURCH: 
MODERN TENDENCIES 



"Rise up, O men of God! 
Have done with lesser things, 
Give heart and soul and mind and strength 
To serve the King of Kings. 

" Rise up, O men of God! 
His kingdom tarries long. 
Bring in the day of brotherhood 
And end the night of wrong. 

" Rise up, O men of God! 
The church for you doth wait, 
Her strength unequal to the task, 
Rise up and make her great. 

"Lift high the cross of Christ! 
Tread where his feet have trod! 
As brothers of the Son of Man, 
Rise up, O men of God! '' 

Rev. William P. Merrill. 



MEN AND THE CHURCH: 
MODERN TENDENCIES 

Many of our churches are face to face with an 
appalling prevalence of non-church attendance. 
In some respects the condition may be no worse 
than in former times. Of former times we may 
not be familiar. Of present conditions who can 
justify his ignorance? A cannon-ball could be 
shot plumb thro' the side of many a church, of 
a Sabbath morning, without hitting a man. The 
ministry are at their wit's end to know what to 
do. Too frequently the resort is to a low sensa- 
tionalism. The pews may fill up for a time with 
curiosity seekers, but after the bubble bursts, 
the after condition is worse than the first. 
Wealthy churches resort to expensive music as 
a medium of attraction. A monthly musical 
festival is largely advertised, and a famous 
singer is procured, and the gospel sermon is 
pigeon-holed, or boiled down into a literary 
sermonette of eight minutes. This generally 
results in a well-filled church. But the congre- 
gation is composed largely of those who are 



io6 The Shrine Invisible 

musically inclined, and their presence in such 
large numbers is no compliment to the minister. 
While ^^the Kttle church around the corner," 
where expensive music is out of the question, 
must put up with even larger yawning chasms 
in the pews, when these musical festivals come 
off in the wealthy church, for neither have 
reached the non-church-goer. Dr. Strong de- 
clares that one-half of the people of the United 
States do not attend church at all, and only 
30 per cent attend with any degree of regu- 
larity. Some time ago a statistical record of 
non-church-goers was made on Manhattan 
Island, and it was found that nine hundred 
thousand people did not attend church at all. 

Who are those who go to church and manage 
the finances of the church? The answer comes 
swiftly, — representatives of the best people. 
One would find of a Sabbath morning, in the 
ordinary church, those who can afford to dress 
well and those who can afford to support the 
church. We find there lawyers, and physicians, 
and merchants, and business men, with their 
families, and teachers, and salesmen, and clerks, 
and educated mechanics. But the great mass 
of the world's workers are not there. Dr. Wash- 
ington Gladden obtained a list of fifty of the 
leading business men in a certain city. He 



Men and the Church 107 

discovered that 55 per cent were communi- 
cants and 77 per cent regular attendants. 
It is an occasion for rejoicing to know that 
people of that character go to church, and are 
commimicants, and are throwing the weight 
of their influence and prestige on the side 
of the church. He who is prominent in the 
social world, whose position is commanding in 
the commercial world, and whose fortune is 
princely enhances the service he can render to 
the church. The church needs many a Nico- 
demus and many a Joseph of Arimathea. But 
while the rich men may find a welcome at the 
feet of Jesus, we must not forget that room 
must be made for those whom the humble 
shepherds represent. In some churches there 
may be a tendency to crowd out those whom 
the shepherds represent; and because this spirit 
may prevail in a few churches, there are those 
who use it as a handle for non-church attendance. 
But should an appeal be made, in behalf of the 
deserving poor, in any of our representative 
churches, the response at once would be hearty 
and generous. Those who continually raise the 
bludgeon, to crack the head of the wealthy 
church member, unwittingly as a rule hit the 
head of the one who would be the first to help 
them if in distress. There are reasons far more 



io8 The Shrine Invisible 

weighty and valid than the impression that 
the church is a sort of a reKgious coterie, or 
^'steepled club/' for ^^ folks of our set." 

It has been said that the '^boy is the father 
of the man." If, therefore, we would have the 
"man" in our church, we must win the "boy." 
To do this we must begin with the home. The 
children in the home are not trained to attend 
church. The duty of church attendance is 
seldom impressed upon the child's mind. If 
they are asked to go at all, they are hired or 
coaxed or both. The habit of church attendance 
is formed early in Ufe. Children are taught to 
look upon the Sunday-school as the children's 
church. In a Sunday-school of five hundred 
scholars in the various departments, what per 
cent would one find in a public congregation of 
a Sabbath morning? The method of conducting 
a modern Sunday-school has become a mighty 
factor in the development of non-church attend- 
ance. Scholars who have not formed the habit 
of church attendance, when they drop out of 
the Simday-school, become lost at once to the 
church. If the boy be lost, the task of winning 
him when he becomes the man has been made 
not only difficult, but well-nigh improbable. 

A certain type of ministers is responsible for 
non-church attendance on the part of a large 



Men and the Church 109 

body of intelligent and thoughtful men. It is 
not putting it too strongly to say, that such men 
are repelled by the low sensational type of 
pulpit ministration that obtains all too fre- 
quently. Indeed, we do not wonder that in- 
telligent men refrain from attending the services 
of some churches. Subjects are announced that 
not only border on the ridiculous, but would 
almost make a burlesque of religion. We cull 
the following that were advertised as worthy of 
sermon subjects: '^The Hobble-skirt Church," 
"High Life: Wine, Women and Cigarettes"; 
*'The Great American Hog"; "The Original 
Idiot"; ^VCuckoo, Cuckoo"; "The Razor that 
God Shaved with." Imagine the Apostle Paul 
addressing the citizens of Corinth on any such 
brain-cracked subjects as the above. The 
minister who poses as a buffoon is to be highly 
censured, for by his methods men are alienated 
from the church. Have ministers, over-anxious 
about empty pews that greet them, forgotten 
that Jesus once declared, "And I, if I be lifted 
up, I WILL DRAW." Every intelKgent layman 
would most heartily commend the words of 
R. T. Edwards, in the "Christian Advocate," 
"When the pulpit is not filled, is it any wonder 
that the pews are empty?" 
The Sabbath does not signify in this day, 



no The Shrine Invisible 

to the many thousands of people, particularly 
men, the opportunity for worship, or spiritual 
culture. Rather how can I get the most out of 
the day for pleasure and recreation. The 
Majestic King of Days has not only his throne 
and sceptre endangered, but his very existence 
is imperilled. He is smothered under that huge 
blanket, the Sunday newspaper, and over his 
prostrate form ride a giddy, thoughtless throng, 
on trolley, and excursion train, and automobile, 
until we wonder will anybody be left to people 
the Lord's temple. In our large cities demands 
are made that opportunities be granted to play 
football and baseball on the Lord's day. 
Thousands are attracted. Boys and young men 
are lured away from the Sunday-school. Ene- 
mies of the Sabbath are becoming more daring 
and defiant. Scarcely a Legislature closes its 
session but that bills are introduced to weaken 
the influence of the Lord's day, or to destroy 
it altogether. 

Then there is the mad rush which characterizes 
modem living at breakneck speed. No need 
for former President Roosevelt to preach the 
strenuous life. The American people are already 
affected by the disease. Nervous prostration 
and a general breakdown come early in life. 
There is a truth, no doubt, in the statement that 



Men and the Church 



III 



no country can boast of so many graves in her 
cemeteries, filled with yoimg men, and no 
coimtry can boast of so many young and beauti- 
ful widows as America. The mad pace of living 
brings about Sunday lassitude and spiritual 
apathy. The hour and a quarter spent in the 
church becomes irksome, and the click of 
the watch-case marks time to the words of the 
minister's sermon. Speed and Greed are the 
modern Molochs of the American people, and 
history will undoubtedly charge up to them the 
greatest sea disaster, the sinking of the Titanic, 
the world has ever known. 

Dr. James M. Buckley, while editor of the 
"Christian Advocate," asked why it was that 
so many men pass by the religion of Christ. 

1. "Is it because they have strong wills, and 
are not ready to subject them to the exactions 
of religion?" 

2. "Is it because their minds are preoccupied 
with labor and responsibility, and when they cease 
from toil, relaxation prevents serious thought? " 

3. "Is it because in the intercourse of busi- 
ness, business men perceive grand incongruities 
in the character and actions of certain loud- 
professing members of the church?" 

4. He sums up: "Whatever the cause, men 
need religion just as truly as women do. They 



112 The Shrine Invisible 

need reKgion personally. They need religion 
that they may be able to train their children 
for support in the hour of trial and great grief. 
They need a religion which converts not only 
from sin, but which converts to service. Men 
especially ought to be the very first to appreciate 
the benefits of the church, to the family, home, 
community and nation, for such benefits can 
never be tabulated in dollars and cents. If the 
church is to wield an important influence on 
the life of the people, men must take hold of 
the work.^^ 

Is the work of the church a man's work? If 
it is, ought it not command not only his respect, 
but also his admiration? If it is, cannot it com- 
pel an expenditure of his time and thought? 
There are certain enterprises which easily bear 
the marks of a man's mind. Our day is one 
of soul-stirring accomplishments. Tremendous 
enterprises are being launched. Mighty men 
have wrought. Surprises await us at every 
turn. Tourists may still be interested in making 
a pilgrimage to some of the old ruins of the old 
world, but they will be largely confined to the 
literary classes. Men today are more interested 
in the startlingly new things than they are 
in RUINS — the new things that particularly 
bid fair to be practical. Men plunge into that 



Men and the Church 113 

which makes large demands on their best 
energies, which appeals to their highest powers. 
If the church keeps pace with these tremendous 
enterprises, dominated by men of superior 
parts, she must invite to a work worth while. 
This the church does, for she not only invites 
to a noble conception of this Kfe, but also to the 
noblest possible conception of the life to come. 
The work of the church is eminently a man's 
work. Men are being made to see this, as never 
before. Women have their place in the church. 
For their loyalty in the past, they are to be 
commended. For their prayers, we are indebted. 
In their devotion to their Christ, their king has 
been honored. A campaign to interest and win 
men to a more active work in the church has 
set in. Men are becoming intensely interested. 
This is evidenced not so much in skillfull}^ man- 
aging parish houses, nor in work altogether along 
lines of social service, according to institutional 
church methods; but in church movements which 
have a large outlook. The church Brother- 
hood movement has attracted the best and 
strongest of men, among many strong denomi- 
nations. Thousands of our strongest laymen 
are interested in the Laymen's Missionary 
propaganda. This represents a phase of church 
work that has swept over the states like a great 



114 The Shrine Invisible 

tidal wave. And now the Interchurch Federa- 
tion movement has aroused the best energies 
of a great host of men, until it has assumed a 
national aspect. Perhaps the Men and Religion 
movement represented more men of brains, and 
wealth, and social prestige than any other one 
organized effort of Christian service since the 
birth of Christianity. It was believed that in 
the churches of America there were three 
million more women than there were men. 
This new quest was to find the three million 
missing men. Men are coming to the front as 
never before. It is no reflection upon woman 
that, when Christ chose his twelve disciples, 
there were no women among them. They were 
all men. Thus Jesus at the very beginning of 
his ministry stamped the character of his work 
as being pre-eminently that of a man. Let 
Mary be welcomed at the Master's feet. Let 
the women stay last at the cross and be the 
first at the tomb on the morning of the resurrec- 
tion. But let men be commissioned as the great 
leaders in world movements of the church, which 
eventually is to conquer the world. It evidently 
was Christ's purpose that man should take his 
stand in the forefront of the work of the church, 
out on the firing line. Men today are hearing 
the summons, calling them to the performance 



Men and the Church 115 

of a great duty, and they are responding heroic- 
ally. The Master himself must be pleased with 
the manner in which men are giving their 
wealth, time, and service to assist in the up- 
building of the Redeemer's kingdom. The men 
of the church clearly see that if the so-called 
alienated masses are to be won, they them- 
selves must play no mean part. Men must be 
met by men, not in a patronizing way, but in 
the spirit of true Christian love. A service 
that is modelled after that rendered the world 
by the most perfect flower of humanity, Jesus 
the Christ, *'who went about doing good," 
must ultimately result in victory, — victory in 
the winning of man and victory in the conquest 
of the masses. How insistent is the demand for 
a high type of manhood in pubUc life! Great 
leaders are needed, men of rugged honesty, men 
of the Lincoln type. The church demands that 
same type of rugged manhood. We need that 
type of manhood, made applicable to the church, 
which finds expression in these stirring lines of 
the poet: 

"God give us men; a time like this demands, 
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and ready hands; 
Men whom the lust of office does not kill. 
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy, 
Men who possess opinions and a will. 
Men who have honor, men who will not lie, 



ii6 The Shrine Invisible 

Men who can face the shameless demagogue, 
And scorn his treacherous flatteries without winking; 
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog, 
In public duty, and in private thinking. 
For while the rabble with their thimibworn creeds, 
Their loud professions, and their little deeds. 
Mingle in selfish strife; lo, freedom weeps, 
Wrong rules the land, and waiting justice sleeps, 
God give us men I" 



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